Bouquet Garni
by seaglasssoul
Summary: Life rarely ever goes as planned. This is hard for Maka to understand as an up-and-coming law student with her future laid out in black and white, and even harder for Soul, who is still getting used to the idea that he has a future at all. But when their lives intersect, they'll have to decide whether to let their pasts define them, or find the courage to start again. Resbang 2017.
1. 1

**A/N:** Here we are, Resbang 2017! I want to thank my betas Marsh of Sleep, zxanthe, Silly Twin Stars, makapedia, Professor Maka, and adulterclavis, who kept me going when I was a sad sack and reminded me that the growing is in the doing.

My artists this year absolutely spoiled me this year, and I highly recommend looking at the AO3 version of this story (I'm skadventuretime over there) to see the art embedded and get links to the playlist that accompanies it. Guacamolesoul and kanyewesevans were amazing art partners and they deserve all of the praise. Please look at their hard work linked in my profile! And many thanks to Guac for letting me use their beautiful art as the cover for this work. :')

Warnings for self-harm mentions (no cutting if that's a specific trigger/squick, though), mentions of depression/anxiety, implied past suicidal thoughts, emotional/psychological abuse, panic attacks, and alcohol.

* * *

 **1: I'm calling you from the future to let you know we've made mistakes**

Maka stared at three different ramen brands, doing her best to ignore the way the background chatter of the grocery store blended into the insidiously catchy chorus of a song older than she was. Her headache was pounding in time with her pulse, but she shoved it aside to better focus on her current dilemma.

Ramen. Cheap, efficient, and calorie dense, ramen was her meal of choice given the exorbitant prices of other similarly convenient foods. The sale on Top Ramen this week meant that she could get almost twice as many packages as Maruchan, her current favorite, but they only had the very underwhelming shrimp flavor in stock. Sapporo Ichiban was the third contender, and while that brand had the most variety of the three, they were still out of the chicken flavor she craved.

After another five minutes deliberating (and taking into consideration the sad daikon radish and limp scallions in her fridge back home), Maka picked up a twelve-pack of the Maruchan chicken and two of the Top Ramen shrimp before heading to the checkout. She blinked away the spots that twinkled in her vision like mini black holes and went to the shortest line she could find during the Saturday dinner rush.

'Shortest' was relative in such a populated area, though, so she took out her phone to triple-check her to-do list, hunting for small tasks she could finish while standing in line - time misused was time lost, Mama would say. Skimming the elaborate system of boxes and sub-boxes she'd set up in one of her two preferred list-making apps, her eyes settled on a small research task she could complete before the frazzled father ahead of her detached himself from his crying child long enough to pay.

Fellowships were not necessarily a required part of her degree, but everybody knew that students who were able to do them, and do them at respected institutions, were much more likely to get the kind of jobs that led to successful and well-regarded careers.

Besides, it was the only way she could hope to work at Mama's law firm.

She bookmarked a few promising organizations before it was her turn at the till. Once her payment was completed, she ignored the buzz in her pocket that was undoubtedly an automatic 'low balance' alert and strode out of the store towards her Cambridgeport apartment.

Graduate school was not over for her yet, but the phenomenal debt that awaited her already lay heavy on her mind. Going to law school was not cheap by any stretch of the imagination, and Maka was going to make sure she graduated with as little interest accrued as possible. She had taken out only enough loans to cover the portion of her tuition not covered by scholarships, along with some for rent and just a little left over for food and other expenses.

Maka's thrift shop bomber jacket blew open in the warm breeze as she walked along the road towards the apartment she shared with her childhood friend, Harvar. The leaves on the few trees she could see were still more or less green, and she felt a pang of sadness at the delayed onset of what was admittedly a large part of what had drawn her to Harvard in the first place. Being from the deserts of Nevada, the ability to experience both cooler temperatures and an entire suite of seasons was extraordinarily enticing - and not for the first time, she cursed climate change and all of the buffoons who refused to acknowledge it.

She gave the still-green trees near her building a final wistful glance before pulling out a lanyard heavy with discount cards and keys, and neatly flipping to the one for her apartment. Three flights of stairs and a door in desperate need of some WD-40 later, Maka was home.

Her lanyard went right onto the neatly labeled hook by the door, shoes went onto the mat next to her pair of secondhand rainboots, and groceries were immediately stacked on the counter to be sorted and put away. She could hear music coming from Harvar's room, something vaguely electronic with a pulsing beat, so she put extra water in the kettle and pulled out some seaweed snacks from their shared cabinet. Her roommate had some interesting tastes when it came to tea snacks, but apparently the pineapple she loved on pizza was grounds for immediate expulsion from the circles he ran in, so to each their own.

Maka was just putting sachets of green tea in their mugs when the music got louder.

"Yo," Harvar said from the door of his room, reaching up to adjust his gaming goggles so he could squint at her groceries on the counter. "Y'know, I've read this manga before: down-on-her-finances protag lives on cheap food until a former boss becomes her meat-daddy. So on the bright side, you have that to look forward to, and can I just say that I hope you meet him soon because I'm beginning to worry your insides are being slowly preserved."

"Excuse you," Maka sniffed as she handed him his mug and started to put food away. "I don't need a 'meat-daddy'; I'm more than capable of getting enough calories on my own. And besides, _I'm_ not the one who subsists on Doritos and Red Bull." She knew he was right, though - growing up in a house where her father often made her undercooked spaghetti in a drunken haze meant that she learned early on to squirrel away granola bars and bags of dried fruit so she wouldn't go hungry, and therefore never learned how to properly cook for herself.

"You're in law school, little dragonhawk, you should know red herrings are a poor substitute for substantive facts," he replied, taking a delicate sip of tea.

She turned away from trying to shove her ramen up on her admittedly too high shelf to give him a flat stare. "I'm hungry, have a terrible headache, and have used up my last shred of patience on crying children at the supermarket. Keep up the sass, and I'll show you why they won't be able to _habeas_ your _corpus._ "

Harvar rolled his eyes and leaned against the counter. "As much as I'd love to see how far I could push you before you broke out the jiu jitsu, I just wanted to let you know I won't make our _How It's Made_ marathon tonight. My parentals are in town and I wanted to show them around a bit before they take me out to dinner. Obligatory offspring duties and all."

A small, familiar ache began to spread from Maka's chest and down through her stomach, but she shoved it away with something approaching practiced ease. "That sounds nice. Have fun."

Harvar saluted. "Will do. I'll be sure to bring back those crunchy noodles and extra soy sauce packets you like so much."

"No use wasting perfectly good condiments - _hey_." Maka stopped talking when she noticed him pantomiming along with her. "It's true! You're paying for them already, it'd be foolish to let them go to waste."

"Yeah, yeah." Harvar's phone buzzed and an annoyed, robotic female voice said, " _Because I'm a potato."_ He pulled it out of his pocket to take a look and grimaced as he ducked into his room to turn off his stereo. "They're here, are we still on for the usual Monday?"

"Yeah, I'll meet you in the park outside the public library."

He waved as he headed out the door.

Her tea was warm in her hands while she stared at the empty space he had occupied, groceries forgotten on the countertops. It was still strange to her, seeing people in normal, functional families; what must it be like, to not have guilt or shame or inadequacy snuff out whatever else might be an emotional option?

Shaking her head, she finished putting away her groceries and took out the final package of last month's ramen for dinner. While she heated up some water in a small saucepan, she grabbed her laptop and logged into her school's online portal to download and file her readings for the week; organization was the only tool she had against the inevitable entropy of the universe.

Schoolwork had always been a way for her to calm herself, to quiet the nasty thoughts that liked to remind her of how far she had to go and the precise dimensions of the shoes she had to fill. Doing what she'd been assigned was productive; she was checking boxes, filling in the space between who she was and who she wanted to be.

She had so far to go.

The alarm on her phone informed her that the water should be boiling, so she went over to drop in her noodles and seasoning packet. The headache that never strayed too far was back, and she stirred the noodles more vigorously in the hopes that they'd cook faster so she could have something in her stomach for ibuprofen.

Five excruciating minutes later, Maka sat down with her ramen, water, and pills. The silence of the apartment was oppressive without the usual music or yelling that would come from Harvar's room, and she found herself drumming out an unsteady beat on her textbook to compensate. Funny, how silence can howl.

Any focus she might have had before dinner slid away like water through her fingers, and the more she tried to hold onto it, the tighter her chest became. She lurched out of her seat, gasping, and tried in vain to take a full breath. On numbing feet she walked across the faded carpet to the windows, turned around, crossed the living room and strode down the hall to take in the peeling paint and mysterious ceiling stains, anything to get her mind off of her stuttering breath. Back and forth she went, pacing to jumpstart her lungs and stave off the thoughts that roared roared roared in her head; no, she was okay, she was doing what was expected of her, she was on track to follow in Mama's footsteps and get the recognition and respect that would reflect how well she was raised. Surely that would be good enough.

Those annoying black spots were back, but now they took on a more sinister cast, like they were grains of sand in an hourglass meticulously counting each second she wasted not pursuing her goals.

If she couldn't keep progressing, what was the point?

A new kind of dizziness seized her. She took her water and stumbled to the bathroom to sit by the toilet, nauseous but unwilling to let her body relieve her of any more of her dignity.

The bathroom floor could use a scrub, she noted distantly while she waited out a second wave of nausea. It was added to the mental to-do list along with buying anti-nausea meds, because if this was going to become routine she wanted to be prepared.

After another ten minutes or so, Maka felt well enough to get up and force a few meager spoonfuls of cold soup into her mouth before knocking back some Advil and crawling into bed. The softness of her comforter was soothing, and she lulled herself to the brink of sleep by going over her itinerary for tomorrow.

She would be fine. Everything was under control.

/

This couldn't be happening.

Maka stared at the piece of paper her professor passed around that listed their class rankings after the second exam of the semester, looked at the alien number five next to her name, and finally blinked. This didn't happen. She was Maka Albarn, top of her class, always a hop, skip, and a jump ahead of number two; _this didn't happen_.

Numb, she passed the sheet on to the classmate next to her, a smarmy looking man with tiny spectacles and a penchant for gelling his hair into strange shapes.

"Ah yes, number one, as expected," he murmured to himself, but loud enough for those in the immediate vicinity to hear.

That broke her out of her spiraling shock and sent a bolt of adrenaline through her system; how _dare_ he think so highly of himself, how _dare_ he assume that he would naturally place so high, how _dare_ -

"Okay everyone, you'll all get a chance to see your grades and rank when the paper gets to you. Until then, we're going to get started," said her administrative law professor, wheeling himself from the podium to the blackboard to begin writing out what he would cover that day.

Maka spent the rest of the class in a strange pseudo-awareness where it felt like she was somehow a two-dimensional creature in a three-dimensional plane, unable to place or categorize all of the information she received. A small part of her urged that something was not right, but most of her was too detached to care.

After class, she drifted out of the room in the general direction of the Cambridge Public Library, because even in her current state she remembered her standing lunch date with Harvar and his boyfriend.

The sun made her squint as she crossed the street towards their usual bench, the noise and very real danger of being hit by a car doing something to bring her back to herself. She was still feeling unmoored, however, when she spotted Kilik opening the lid to a complicated-looking salad.

"Hello, Maka," he said, gesturing with the container to the empty space next to him. "Harv should be here any minute; his stream was running late last night because he hit another follower goal or something."

Maka frowned as she took out her root beer and sandwich. "I thought I heard him rummaging through the fridge when I got up for my five AM run."

Kilik heaved a long-suffering sigh. "He says it's 'part of the job,' but I told him that I'm not a doctor _yet_ and would by no means supply him with medical grade amphetamines anyway." He paused, looking at her more closely. "You seem out of it, is everything okay?"

Maka had simply stopped midway through a bite of her peanut butter and jelly sandwich, so she took a swig of her soda to hasten things along. "I'm fine. Just tired." The fewer people who knew about her shame, the better. She could _fix_ this, she could regain her proper place at the top of her class before Harvar or Kilik found out she was a failure -

"Earth to Maka, transmission incoming."

She started, eyes struggling to focus on Harvar walking towards her, carrying his heavily-patched messenger bag and looking a little more pale than usual.

"You all right in there?" he asked as he inserted himself between her and Kilik, casually pilfering a stray piece of grilled chicken from Kilik's salad. "I was going to be upset that you guys started without me, but since you clearly need the energy, I'll let it go."

"'Start?'" Kilik quipped, giving him an exaggerated once-over. "Looks like someone didn't bring lunch. Sleep deprivation steal your appetite?"

"I don't want to talk about it," Harvar said, covering a yawn with the back of his hand. "Anyway, it was totally worth it because I went from 20k to 25k subscribers over the course of a few hours. A new record, even for me."

"Well, then I can't wait to be showered in gifts from all that extra income," Kilik said, opening up Harvar's bag to pull out a bottle of sports water and take a sip. "You know I have expensive tastes."

"Yeah, those bath bombs sure cost a pretty penny - uh, Maka? You okay?"

A muscle in her foot had begun to spasm, so she had taken off her boot in a vain attempt to massage it out. "Hm? Oh, yeah, sorry, sometimes my muscles twitch for no reason. It's obnoxious, really, but it seems to go away on its own after some rubbing."

Kilik sat up straighter and frowned at her. "When was the last time you had some water?"

"This morning, I think. But there's water in this soda," Maka said, showing him the ingredients list on her root beer.

"That doesn't count," he said, giving her the same kind of look she'd seen tired parents give their young children. "You need about eleven and a half cups water each day to function optimally, between food and drinking, and soda also has a lot of sugar that prompts your body to use those fluids to process it. You said your muscles were spasming - that sounds like a classic case of electrolyte deficiency to me. Are you getting enough calcium and magnesium?"

"Dude, she lives on ramen and kidney beans, probably not," Harvar said. "D'you think she's deficient in something?"

Kilik fiddled with his fork for a moment. "It's possible," he said at last, pulling out his phone and beginning to type furiously with one hand. "Let me look something up real quick."

" _Hello_ , I'm still _here_ ," Maka said, somewhat indignantly, while Harvar leaned over Kilik's shoulder with a worried expression. "And for the record, I take a multivitamin every other day, so I highly doubt I'm deficient in anything besides _patience_ at this extremely personal foray into my daily eating habits."

"Most multivitamins don't include electrolytes, which are very important for nerve function and the lack of which is likely the cause of your muscle spasms. And, well." Kilik looked from the white bread of her sandwich to the root beer wedged between her knees to the small bag of chips she had just opened up. "I know you're trying to be frugal, but you can't afford to skimp on your health. How well you take care of yourself now will influence how your body takes care of itself in the decades to come, and I'd be doing my future profession a disservice by not trying to help." He rummaged around in his backpack for a moment before pulling out a few lime-green packets and summarily thrusting them into her backpack. "Electrolyte packets. These are leftover after my rotation in the pediatric unit, but they should help."

More than a little defensive, Maka clutched her sandwich with one hand and snatched back her backpack with the other. "My mom used to pack this for my lunch every day when I was a child; what do you mean it's not good?"

"Maka, your mother is a lawyer, not a nutritionist," Harvar said, pulling her under his arm so he could pat the side of her face. "If she didn't know good eating habits, she sure as hell wasn't going to pass them on to you."

She stared at her half-eaten sandwich. The healthy eating craze had certainly not missed her; it was hard to be a good citizen and read the morning news every day without seeing at least one headline devoted to some health craze or another. But she had always breezed past those, secure in the knowledge that her mother was an incredible woman who made her diet decisions as judiciously as she made her case arguments.

"I believe you mean the best for me, but I'm still not convinced my mother was in the wrong here," Maka said finally, taking a vicious bite of her sandwich. "I'm going to need to see some evidence."

A slow grin crept across Kilik's face, his dark eyes gleaming in the afternoon sun. "Spoken like a true lawyer. Let's start with whole versus refined grains, and yes, I'll send you an email with the annotated bibliography when I get home."

/

She had opened Pandora's Box.

Maka picked at her bag of chips with the kind of dejected lethargy she had displayed after coming in second for her state's middle school vocabulary competition. Her laptop was open on the table next to her, tab after tab filled with peer-reviewed journal articles providing damning evidence against the kinds of cheap, refined carbs that made up almost her entire diet.

Kilik was right. She _was_ eating garbage.

Next to the tabs detailing precisely how refined carbs affect blood sugar were tabs open to recipes and shopping lists for healthier diets. Maka couldn't look directly at those; the difference in price to what she was used to was enough to give her heart palpitations.

Harvar's door creaked open and he poked his head out, goggles on and his bun looking a little more spiky than usual. "How're you holding up? Kilik said the facts have swayed you."

A long, drawn out groan was all she could muster as she melted onto the coffee table.

"There, there." Harvar walked into the kitchen where Maka could hear him fiddling with the electric kettle. When he came back out a few minutes later, he was holding two steaming mugs of her favorite matcha tea and made a big show of placing one on the coaster closest to her face with an etched triangle symbol he kept calling 'The Triforce.'

"What's going on? The Maka I know sees a problem, makes a plan, and solves things; she doesn't sit there like a lump of chu-jelly and sulk."

She rolled her head to the side so she could fix him with half a glare. "I am _trying_ to make a plan, but all of the options so far are much too expensive to be conscionable. Also, how did you know I spoke to Kilik? Didn't he say he was waiting on his new phone to arrive after that incident with the autopsy practicum?"

"Discord," Harvar said as he sat at the table with her and took off his headset in what she interpreted as a chivalrous gesture.

"How does chaos help you communicate with your boyfriend?" Maka asked, far too overwhelmed with her quarter-life dietary crisis to even begin to fathom what he might mean.

"Discord is like Skype except better in every way – look, that's not the point. He told me you might need a friend right now, so here I am, friend-mode engaged." He took a sip of his tea and waited, damn him to hell, knowing full well that she'd fold after a minute or two.

"It's just." Maka began to rhythmically tap her forehead against the table. "It's just a lot to realize that your entire gastronomical life has been a lie and that you _and_ your mother may be at risk for over five diet-related health issues, and that's not counting cancers."

Harvar nodded without saying a word, and his sympathetic silence egged her on.

"And then there's the issue of time. So many of these recipes require hours of prep time, or cooking time, or _marinating_ time, which _in turn_ requires time to plan ahead and the foresight to ensure that such preparation doesn't conflict with classes or transportation or exercise, and that's not even _beginning_ to get into the opportunity cost of preparing all of this food compared to the value I get from my current study schedule which, mind you, is already packed to the breaking point, and how many multipliers I'm going to need to add to those prep times since I have never really cooked in my whole life and now suddenly need to make three square meals a day -"

"Woah woah woah, calm down there, motormouth. This is why we have the Internet: to make our lives easier. C'mere." He stood and started back to his room, pausing to look pointedly over his shoulder when she remained draped across the coffee table.

So she dragged herself up and followed him, curiosity overtaking the mild panic that had been building from the moment she had opened her mouth - it wasn't every day Harvar let her into his room, and from the vague whispers she heard from mutual friends who knew much more about this sort of thing than she did, he was something of a big deal in the video game streaming world.

His dual monitors glowed on the home screen of a game, what looked like a woman in an angel suit smiling benignly with a metal staff in hand. Harvar walked over to fiddle with something on one monitor and then grab his phone off of the oversized mouse pad that took up over half of his large wooden desk. Maka took the moment to stare at his chair, upholstered in so many stripes and sharp angles it looked like it belonged on a roller coaster ride or maybe in a race car. There was also a mic on his desk suspended from a contraption that reminded her of the Pixar desk lamp, and she had to resist the sudden urge to make it swivel.

"Come on in," he said, taking a seat on his bed and patting the space next to him.

Maka obliged, sitting gingerly on the edge of his dark comforter while he thumbed into his phone.

"Have you been on Instagram before?" he asked, tapping an icon that looked like an old-fashioned camera.

"Um, not really." Her friends had done the Snapchat and Instagram thing back in undergrad, but she'd always preferred to eat her food while it was hot and text her friends a picture when she wanted them to see something.

Harvar smiled indulgently and leaned toward her, phone in hand. "Well, you're about to have your mind blown."

He tilted the screen in her direction so she could see the bright and stylized photos he was scrolling past. "I'm sure you can get the gist of how it works on your own, but Instagram is great because it has whole accounts dedicated to teaching people how to cook, complete with recipes and ingredient lists. More than that, though," he looked at her from the corner of his eye, "they often have _videos_ that show how they cook something, so even if you've never done it before, you can get the right idea."

Maka gazed at his phone, taking in all the colors and the slick editing of the video he had stopped on. "Are those…cupcakes?"

"Hm?" He glanced at his screen and made a curious sound, eyebrows raised. "Looks like it. Man, that filling is kind of pornographic, don't you think?"

Tearing herself away from the glorious mountain of icing and sprinkles before her, she said, "The kinds of things they're cooking look incredibly expensive."

He sighed and got up to check something on his monitor. "You say that, but you seem to have no scruples about sometimes treating yourself to microwaveable and frozen dinners, and I _know_ you know those are more expensive in the long run, She Who Reads Unit Prices."

Maka wilted sideways onto his bed, hiding her pout behind a body-sized plushie in the shape of a ribeye steak.

"Scroll through Buzzfeed Tasty or Goodful for a bit; if nothing jumps out at you, you don't have to download the app. It just breaks my Omnic heart to see you eat questionable ramen every day."

"It is not questionable; it has _character_ ," Maka replied, burrowing further into the mountain of plushies at the end of his bed. "Also, what do you mean by 'Omnic?'"

Harvar was already speaking into his headset, something about needing a tank instead of three DPS, but he muted himself long enough to say, "You don't have enough gamer cred for me to be able to explain this before I start streaming."

Maka grabbed the nearest plushie - what looked like a Chinese dumpling with tentacle legs and a beaming smile - and said, "I'm taking one of your children hostage for that."

He narrowed his eyes. "You be nice to Pachimari, you hear."

She gave it a squeeze and almost dropped it when it let out a squeak like a dog toy. "Yeah, yeah, she's safe with me," Maka said as she left Harvar's room, closing the door on her way out so he could do whatever it was streamers did.

Her phone was still on the table back in the living room. She stared at it for a few moments before reaching a cautious hand forward, glaring at her lock screen picture of the Boston Public Library for a few seconds, and unlocking her phone.

Suzume Albarn wouldn't push something to the side without a proper investigation, and neither would Maka.

So Maka typed 'Instagram healthy recipes' into the search bar on her phone's web browser and began to scroll through rows and rows of aesthetically pleasing pictures, periodically tapping on one to take a closer look at the hashtags to see how that changed her search results. It only took ten minutes of browsing for her to grudgingly agree that this could be a useful resource, so she went into the app store with not a small amount of chagrin to begin the downloading process.

She moved to the couch while she waited, setting Pachimari next to her with a small pat so she could curl up against the armrest. Instagram opened in another few moments and prompted her to choose a username, which gave her pause: the last time she'd had to make one was for her Neopets account back in middle school, and there was no way in _hell_ she was going to be known as "bookworm94" at this stage in her life.

Glaring at the screen didn't give her any clever ideas, so she got up to start boiling some water for ramen. Privacy and anonymity were incredibly important to her - as a future lawyer, she didn't want _anyone_ to have _anything_ that could be bent to use against her in a smear campaign one day, and that included being traced back to a social media account as innocuous as Instagram. There was a reason she had a slew of privacy add-ons for web browsers and shared Harvar's VPN.

She selected one of the shrimp packages, deciding to save the more tasty chicken flavor for nights she needed a pick-me-up. While the water boiled, she did some stretches in the hopes it would help her intermittently twitching calves before caving and mixing up one of those electrolyte packets Kilik had shoved into her backpack earlier. Her tongue tasted like fake lemon-lime when she opened the ramen package and slid the noodles neatly into the pot, staring at them like they had personally betrayed her. She discarded the wrapper with a practiced flick of the wrist.

It landed in the garbage backside up, and the shock of the white nutrition label above the barcode caught her eye enough that she glanced at it again and - _that was it_.

She paused just long enough to grab a new package of chicken ramen before scurrying back to her phone, triumphant: she had a username.

Back on the prompt screen, Maka squinted at the first six digits of the number series beneath the ramen barcode and tapped them in. Instagram accepted the name, and she smiled - 041789 was not something someone could easily connect to her, and as long as she kept the profile picture something neutral or inanimate, no one would know it was her.

A long and creative string of profanity from Harvar's room broke her self-satisfied silence; something must not being going well in his game. Sure enough, a minute or so later Harvar came out with his goggles off and a glare that could cut steel.

"Fuckin' Hanzo mains," he spat, plunking himself into the bean bag chair opposite the couch. "Needed a tank, but ' _no man, we have two healers, four dps will work.'_ You'd think there'd be fewer one-tricks at high elo, but they're a plague every goddamn game."

Maka raised an eyebrow. "You do realize that I don't understand a word of what you just said, right?"

He put his head in his hands.

"There, there," she said. "You'll get them next time."

"Nngh." Harvar raised his head and looked at her. "So, how's Instagram treating you? I assume you _did_ create an account, since you're finally not either scowling or staring into the void."

"Fine, I guess," she said, glancing down at the first post she liked, a looping video that showed the makings of a cupcake bedecked in a gaudy mountain of icing. "Why do you ask?"

"How else are you going to get your first follower?" Harvar fished his phone out of his sweatpants and hovered a thumb over the keypad. "Well? Am I going to have to resort to advanced hacking techniques or are you gonna give it up?"

"We both know you wouldn't dare risk getting put into my triangle choke again," Maka said, her hand tightening around her phone nonetheless. "It's a security risk, and I don't want anyone knowing it's connected to me."

"Have I told you lately how paranoid you are?"

"Verbally or through those sassy little post-it notes you leave on my door?"

Harvar sighed and pocketed his phone. "Fine, be that way. Just remember I can make you Instagram famous whenever you want."

"Sure, whatever that means," Maka said, picking up her much too cold tea and taking a sip. "You gonna be okay in there the rest of the night? Surely your viewers must be willing to give you a break after all those late night streams."

He shrugged. "Eh, it's whatever. They expect that shit all the time, it's always 'Kappa this, MonkS that, you know the deal." At Maka's blank look, he added, "Well, you _will_ know; I'll explain it to you sometime. Oh, and remember to take some small breaks to look at a far wall every hour or so so you don't strain your eyes, might help your headaches."

"Thanks, mom," she said with a warm smile. "And you better not skip out on marathon night this week, it's been ages since I've watched _Unwrapped._ "

"It's a date." He smiled back and made an interlocked loop with both thumbs and forefingers, an old password greeting they'd come up with as kids when it was safe for him to sneak into her room to keep her company while her father had guests.

She returned the gesture and looked back at her phone. It was only eight; she could browse a little more before getting back to school work.

Forgotten, her ramen cooled on the coffee table as she began to scroll through pages of scrumptious looking food.

/

"Dude, did you even go to bed?" Harvar leaned against the wall and squinted at her with the bleary eyes of a man who needed at least four more hours of sleep, his too-large sweatpants revealing a waistband full of fluffy sheep Pokemon.

Maka flicked her eyes up from the twelfth iteration of her grocery list to look at the time, and – _shoot,_ it really was just after seven. As if acknowledging the time broke some sort of spell, she was suddenly made intensely aware of the crick in her neck and how grainy her eyes felt. But it was worth it, worth every hour her body had cried out for sleep, because she had found the most incredible Instagram account.

"Wow. I was not expecting this when I got you into Insta." He walked into the kitchen to futz with the coffeemaker, popping his head around the corner to give her the customary 'Is it okay if I make this exceedingly strong?' head tilt. At her return arched eyebrow of 'Do you really need to ask?,' he saluted and ducked back in to hit the start button on the machine, because of course he would have made it his way regardless.

"So. Tell me all about what got you to blow past your strict ten-thirty bedtime and miss your five AM run," Harvar said when he came back out with two mugs of black coffee and a couple corn muffins that have seen better days. "I'm clearly missing out."

"Well…" Maka took a slow bite of her muffin and gazed at the small bubbles floating along the edge of her coffee. "I was looking in the 'on the table' tag because there seemed to be a lot of pretty and healthy-looking pictures there. I kept clicking on ones by the same account, Vieille Cafetière, so I just went to their page directly, and-" She sighed, swirling her mug and watching the thin tendrils of steam twist towards the ceiling. "Have you ever read something and felt like you got to know the person behind it?"

"Depends, does manga count?"

Maka gave him a half-hearted smack. "I'm serious. I went to their blog's main page from the link in their Instagram profile, and it took me to this beautiful site that had all the recipes from their Insta and more, but also little stories to go with them." She smiled and tapped the side of her mug. "The writing was really heartfelt. It was kind of lonely, kind of wistful, but also full of this warmth, and just - you could tell this person poured something of themselves into these recipes, and I guess that struck a chord with me."

Harvar gave her a curious look. "Sounds like someone's got a crush."

"What? Thisisn't a _crush,_ this is appreciating someone's art!" she said, affronted. "Reading the blogger's stories and anecdotes felt like hanging out with you during a marathon night, is all, and I certainly don't have a crush on _you._ "

"Okay, okay, I'm just glad to hear it's been helpful," he said, dunking a piece of muffin into his mug. "Think you'll be able to kick the ramen habit soon?"

"We'll see," she said as she took a sip of coffee and glanced at her list. "I don't have class today, so I think I'll try my hand at a couple of these recipes, but, well, now I've gone and ruined my perfect sleep schedule." She frowned, then met his eyes. "If you see me napping, please kick me awake."

"Am I allowed to take silly Snapchat-filtered pictures of you first?"

Maka looked at him, unblinking. "I am imagining what it would feel like to slowly decapitate all of your figurines with a bread knife."

"Fine, fine, I'll poke you if I see you snoozing before eight. I'm gearing up for a twenty-four hour stream though, so I won't be leaving my room very often. Good luck with all that cooking." He shoved his goggles back over his eyes and ambled back to his room with coffee and half-eaten muffin in hand.

Maka read through her list one more time to make sure she wasn't forgetting anything before she got up to shove her feet in her boots, grab her lanyard from its hook, and head out the door. There was a Trader Moe's not too far from the apartment that was likely to have the ingredients she needed, and while she had only gone there once when she was looking for some fresher garnish options for a special occasion ramen, it seemed like it had all of the essentials for a better price than the other corner stores in her neighborhood.

A blast of cool air greeted her when she walked through the automatic doors into the produce section, a welcome relief after the suffocating, unseasonable humidity outside. She took out her list - alphabetized by store section, naturally - and began to look for avocados. There were three recipes she wanted to get ingredients for after reading nearly half of Vieille Cafetière: a vegetable stir-fry, a chicken burrito bowl, and a pesto pasta. They all seemed to be easy from a technical standpoint, and all of them included the kinds of ingredients Kilik had not-so-subtly told her she should eat.

She was just grabbing a container of cilantro when something bumped into her from the side.

"Oh, sorry miss," said an employee, judging from his vibrant Hawaiian shirt and plain slacks. "These salad containers are so damn - uh, so darn slippery."

Maka smiled politely and bent to pick up a small clamshell that had slipped from the giant stack in his hands. "It's okay, I got my cilantro just fine," she said, holding up the package.

The man did a small double take, then squinted at it for a moment - he'd probably be someone Harvar would get along with, what with those red contacts - and said, "That's parsley, not cilantro. You can tell because the leaves for parsley are sharper, kind of like spades in a deck of cards, and cilantro's leaves are more rounded, like clubs."

"Oh!" Maka took a closer look at the stiff plastic package and, sure enough, it said 'parsley' near the bottom in neat lettering. "But I got it from the cilantro section."

"Yeah, sometimes people change their minds and put things back in the wrong place." He scowled, clearly offended by this practice. "You should get in the habit of checking everything you grab off the herb shelf."

"Right," Maka said, looking down at the package and chewing her lip. This whole healthy eating thing was already a lot more complicated than picking up a few packages of ramen, beans, and vitamins.

The employee must have picked up on her discomfort because he cleared his throat, brushed back a tendril of snow white hair that had escaped his tidy ponytail, and said, with a strained attempt at a smile, "So, what're you gonna make with the cilantro?"

"I'm trying out a recipe I found online for chicken burrito bowls. I, um." She paused, suddenly self-conscious about the fact that she didn't belong here, in the fresh foods section of a grocery store talking about following the first recipe she'd ever really looked at. "I don't cook much, so it probably won't turn out that well, but.." She trailed off as it hit her that she was maybe getting in a little over her head; after all, she still had three assignments to complete by the end of the day, plus all of her class readings, and that didn't even _begin_ to get into her longer term projects -

"Mind if I take a look?" The employee's words startled her back to the present, a strangely hesitant warmth stirring behind those peculiar eyes. "I cook pretty often and might be able to give you some tips."

"Uh, sure, here." Maka pulled out her phone and swiped into the picture she took of the recipe from one of Vieille Cafetière's Instagram captions. "I'm not sure how good of a recipe it is or anything..."

"Don't worry about that sort of thing, it only matters if you like the way it tastes," he said while he leaned in to look at her phone, and Maka noted that he smelled like those little lavender hand soaps her mother used to bring back from business trips in Europe. "Yeah, I've made this before," he said with a strange little smile. "It's solid, just make sure you go hard with the spices."

His words were oddly validating. Maka put her phone back in her pocket and said, "Thank you, I'll remember that. Have a nice rest of your day."

He waved with a lazy half-smile and went back to stacking salad containers into the cooler.

It was a simple matter to retrieve the rest of the ingredients on her list, and she got back to her apartment more or less in the amount of time she had budgeted for shopping. The increase in her usual grocery costs weren't _as_ staggering as she had feared, but she'd still have to cut out expenses elsewhere to be sure. Looks like those new winter boots would have to wait. And since Harvar was doing his long stream thing, she would have the kitchen all to herself for her first stab at cooking.

Maka put her phone on the counter and queued up the relevant Instagram video from her carefully curated liked posts, taking a few moments to watch the video loop until she felt confident in the general order of things. This particular recipe called for a crockpot to cook the chicken and vegetables, so it wasn't too attention-intensive.

She started in on the marinade and took special care to add the extra lime juice the employee had recommended. She also doubled the cilantro and used heaping teaspoonfuls of spices instead of level ones, and overall felt pretty good about herself when she closed the lid on the marinated, spiced, and vegetable'd chicken breasts. The last task was to prepare some rice to serve it over, but that could wait a few hours until the chicken was almost done.

Before long, a tantalizing, savory smell filled the apartment and made it very hard to focus on the cases she was supposed to be reading. By the time she got up and prepared the rice, she was practically drooling; she'd had no idea that chili powder, cumin, onions, and garlic could make chicken smell this good.

When it was ready, Maka scooped some rice into a bowl, spooned a healthy serving of the shredded chicken and vegetables atop it, and finished it with sliced avocado and some of the leftover juices from the bottom of the crockpot. It smelled too good to let sit any longer, so she grabbed a fork and took a bite.

It was like she'd popped a bubble full of intense flavor on her tongue: the brightness of the lime juice brought out nuances she'd never noticed in chicken, and the subtle heat and earthiness of the spices added a roundness she hadn't experienced before. She took another bite, and then another, until her bowl was empty and her heart felt full in ways it hadn't for a long time.

A lingering smile touched her lips. Maybe this cooking thing wouldn't be so bad, after all.


	2. 2

**2: I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me**

Two things occurred to Soul when Miles Davis's jaunty trumpet began playing from his phone: one, that he'd agreed to do their first shoot this morning instead of the usual early afternoon; and two, that _because_ it was a shoot day he had about five seconds until -

"Bonjour, chéri," Anya trilled as she all but kicked down his door, smelling of yeast and cinnamon-sugar and wearing the frilly apron he got her as a Christmas present many years ago.

"Nngh," Soul replied, fumbling to turn off his alarm with his left hand while shoving his face deeper into the pillow with his right.

"Now now," she tutted, the sound of her voice getting louder and that enticing smell growing stronger. "I made you your favorite sticky buns, the ones with those candied pecans you love so much."

A cautious head roll confirmed her words: there, on the small plate in her hands, was an almost sinfully gooey sticky bun, chunks of pecan glistening in what smelled like a maple-cardamom syrup. He took in a slow, deep breath, savoring the warm scent of the yeast and spices, before nudging himself into a sitting position. "Thanks. You didn't have to do this."

"Well of course I didn't," she said, already on her way out now that she had assured he was awake and more or less vertical. "But you're worth it."

The subtle emphasis on 'worth' made a confusing mix of shame, affection, and guilt tumble through his gut. "Yeah."

"Now remember, I'm meeting Meme and Tsugumi for breakfast this morning, but I'll be back in time to help you with that silly Instant-what's-it."

Soul glanced at his phone again, a bland 8:04 glowing at him atop his lockscreen picture of a colander full of purple green beans that he'd gotten as a bonus in his CSA subscription earlier that summer. "Okay, sounds good. I'll wake up and get everything prepped."

She flashed him a dainty smile before closing the door.

The smell of the sticky bun was too much to resist, so he tore off a bite of it and nearly groaned out loud - such a perfect combination of tender dough, warm spices, and sticky sweetness. A new surge of affection for his roommate propelled him to get out of bed, the extra fabric in his hand-me-down flannel pants pooling at the top of his feet like mounds of melted wax because apparently his brother had to be better than him when it came to height, too.

With a small shake of his head and a familiar grimace, Soul shoved that line of thought from his mind and shuffled into the kitchen, where the electric kettle was waiting to be filled. He could feel the ghost of Anya's disapproving glare in the back of his mind, like she had gone and tattooed a piece of herself inside of him, and anytime the barbed edges of his self-loathing drew blood she would attempt to vaporize them.

As the water got to boiling, Soul grabbed the French press base from the drying rack and set it on the counter next to the kettle. It was a small metal one, and very old; he had gotten it on his study abroad trip to France, the same trip on which he met Anya, from an old man with the bluest eyes he'd ever seen who had happened to hear him practicing the piano one day. All he'd said in a gentle Toulouse accent was, " _Even the strongest of hearts need help staying warm sometimes,"_ and left.

Once the kettle clicked off and steam rose from its spout, Soul reached up to the pantry cabinet nearest him and pulled out a small, vacuum-sealed container of coffee he'd special ordered from his favorite local roaster. Four rounded tablespoons went into the press before the boiled water - weak coffee was a cardinal sin in his professional opinion - and he took a moment to simply breathe in the comforting, earthy aroma.

It was then he noticed the pyramid of empty beer cans next to the recycling bin.

Not _in_ it, oh no. That would probably have offended whatever illogical sensibility his third roommate, Blaine, possessed. Since Soul wasn't quite sure whether this was _really_ trash or another ill-advised attempt by Blaine to be an 'ar-teest,' he let it be with just the usual amount of side-eye.

Sighing, Soul wandered over to the living room side of the breakfast bar and swung the barstool around to look out the window.

Early morning sunlight streamed in through gossamer curtains that framed the bay windows of their Brookline apartment, adding a soft glow to one of the large, broken-in couches that took up almost half of the living room. Small papers and coasters were scattered about the television stand alongside the remotes, because the rustic oak coffee table was reserved for photo shoot use only.

It was nice. Calm, quiet, secure. Things at which Soul marveled, because they were also qualities he still wasn't sure he deserved.

Before Mind-Anya could arch another eyebrow at him, the door to Blaine's room swung open with the kind of energy that should be reserved for mosh pits or boxing matches.

"Morning Broseph, what's the haps?" Blaine asked as he walked to the kitchen sink and stuck his head under the tap to get a drink, wetting half of his cerulean-dyed hair in the process.

"We have _glasses_ , you know," Soul replied, still not fully divested of his rigidly-mannered upbringing. "What are you doing up this early, anyway?" He glanced at the beer cans still stacked by the trash. "Especially after so many beers."

"Oh good, you saw my Beeramid." A wicked grin split Blaine's face and he crept over to Soul, leaning in to whisper, "A discerning gentleman's gotta taste the competition, yanno? Luckily for everyone involved, all of these sucked and didn't deserve to become one with my awesome bod. But! I decided that they _did_ deserve a proper funeral." He then proceeded to take each of the ten cans and - with a roar like a crazed bear - smash them one by one against his forehead before flinging them discus-style into the recycling bin.

"Are you real?" Soul said, bringing up a tired hand to pinch the bridge of his nose.

"As real as this eight-pack, baby," Blaine replied, whipping off his tank top to reveal an admittedly perfect set of abs.

"It's far too early for this," Soul said, turning back to his French press because it was finally ready. "At least let me have my coffee before you start stripping."

"I saw you 'mirin, bruh. You want abs like this? I can help with that, hit me up whenever and I'll train you."

"Will you now." Leaning against the doorframe to Blaine's room was Theodore Michael Ramses III, who went by Kid for reasons he'd cryptically said involved a deal with a death god. "Wasn't _I_ next in line to be 'chiseled into the likeness of Adonis?'" It seemed to physically pain him to say those words.

"Babe, you're awake!" Blaine rushed over to plant a wet, sloppy kiss next to both of the small, gleaming snakebite piercings beneath his lips. "My training program for _you_ is in the bedroom."

Kid took both the PDA and Blaine's lack of subtlety with the tired stoicism that Soul had begun to realize was a major part of his personality and calmly shoved Blaine out of his personal space. "I see my attempt to meet you where you are with this sort of banter has once again backfired spectacularly. I'll be in the shower if you need me." For all of his apparent disdain, Soul didn't miss the small hand squeeze he gave Blaine as he walked by, somehow making one of Blaine's old baseball shirts and a pair of skull-print boxers look like court attire.

"Isn't he dreamy?" Blaine sighed, staring after him with uncharacteristic longing.

"I'm just happy you're happy," Soul said, remembering all too well Blaine's magical girl anime binge the last time he was dumped; he still got emotional when someone mentioned the power of friendship.

"Now we've just gotta get you squared away," Blaine said with a bracing punch to Soul's bicep. "What's it gonna be? Guys, gals, nonbinary pals? What're you into?"

"I don't know, but could you let me have my coffee in peace? We have a shoot this morning," Soul said, somewhat more irritably than he'd intended, but he wanted to move on from talk about his love life; Blaine liked to play matchmaker enough as it was.

"All right, all right. I'll go surprise Kid with a shower massage." Blaine was down the hall in a few strides, closing the bathroom door behind him before Soul could really process his exit.

He stood in the new stillness for a moment, felt the hardwood floor beneath his toes and listened to the distant patter of water on a shower curtain, and thought about how surreal it was to be alive.

A car horn blared outside, and the moment passed. So he shook his head and went to check on the overnight oats they were featuring on their blog this week.

Today's shoot involved a bevy of the soaked oats, a popular breakfast option for the busy, health-conscious individual. They took just a moment to stir together the night before and could be customized in just about as many ways as you could imagine; their shoot today would feature paleo, vegan, and high-protein options in over a dozen flavor combinations. He picked up a couple of the mason jars and swirled them to check consistency, smiling a little when they were the perfect balance between creamy and pourable.

His next item to check was the kombucha. Most people shied away from home fermenting, especially when it required what looked like a giant blobfish made of bacteria and yeast. The end product was more than worth it to Soul, though: tangy, bubbly, easy to flavor in myriad ways. It was his go-to beverage when he'd had enough of water and it wasn't yet time to start in on the wine.

He went through the usual check up: observe the SCOBY for mold, check for small bubbles beneath its surface, make sure the date on the gallon mason jar in which it rested was at least two weeks old. It all looked good, so he added bottling kombucha to his mental checklist of things to do after work. The second fermentation was what brought out the bubbles he liked so much and was where all the fun flavor additions could happen, like ginger or strawberry or grapefruit.

Another glance at his phone revealed it was still only quarter to nine, which meant he had a fair bit of time before Anya returned from her breakfast engagement. Soul was still unused to these little moments where he had no one to please but himself, when there was no one looking over his shoulder murmuring _but Wes had done this at your age._

He spotted the tail end of a piece of yarn sticking out of one of the cabinets in the television stand and remembered the shawl he had been working on. Knitting was the first of many activities Anya had sat him down to learn, a helpless kind of desperation in her eyes as she taught him how to knit and purl and use paperclips to mark rows. It hadn't stuck with him the same way cooking had, but he still enjoyed the focused feeling of productivity it gave him.

So he grabbed his mug from the counter, topped it off with a hot splash of coffee from the press, and walked over to take out his needles and yarn. Well, _Anya's_ needles, despite what she said; she had pressed them into his hands one night and said they were his until he could knit her the biggest, warmest shawl she had ever seen. They were ivory and intricately carved at the ends, a family heirloom passed down from her great-grandmother who won them in a daring bet with a pompous oil baron, and who had passed away while Soul and Anya were still studying in France.

They were meant to be cherished.

He swallowed the lump in his throat with a hearty sip of coffee and picked up where he had left off. Once he got going, each row became a blur of knits and purls, his piano-trained fingers well-adapted to tasks requiring fine motor skills.

He fell into such a trance, in fact, that when Anya walked through the door an hour and a half later, he nearly threw the ball of yarn across the room in sheer panic.

"Someone's full of piss and vinegar," Anya said, amused, while she took off her tailored jacket and placed her leather purse on the arm of the couch. "You ready to start, then?" Her eyes fell on the needles and yarn in his lap and she paused, eyes suddenly sharp. "How are you feeling?"

"Hm? Oh, I'm fine, I just had some extra time after prepping the oats," Soul said with what he hoped was a reassuring smile. Anya had the uncanny ability to know when he was heading towards a shitty mental space, and at one point knitting had been the only thing keeping his hands from reaching for less innocuous tools.

"All right then," she said, face visibly relaxing. "Let's get to it."

Photoshoot days were always a little hectic, but they were also one of Soul's favorite parts of being a food blogger. There was something very satisfying about capturing not just an object on camera, but also the feelings it evoked; the special way everyone had very different memories of the same dish was something he'd never gotten over.

Anya was in charge of the _froofing_ , as she liked to put it. She would plate whatever he had made and help him capture the aesthetic that went along with each dish. Soul would then come in with his camera and take dozens of shots from various angles in whatever combination they were doing that day. Since it was the oats today, he took a few shots each of what promised to be the most popular flavors and then let Anya arrange them for a stylish group picture.

They were just about wrapping up when Blaine stepped out of his room carrying a five-gallon plastic keg and some tubing.

"How's food prom going?" he asked as he brought the keg over to the sink to clean it.

"How's your new boy-toy?" Anya asked frostily in return, no love lost between them after the incident with Terry the Tarantula.

"He's not a boy-toy," Blaine replied with intense gravitas, still rinsing out his keg. "I think he's the one."

"You've been dating for three months," Soul said from a very painful position, from which he was endeavoring to get a good angle on all of the jars.

"Maybe so, but I've been flexing at him for over two years, so I think that counts." He'd moved onto cleaning the tubes, and a malty, _yeasty_ sort of smell began to take over the subtle vanilla and sweetness of the oats.

Anya simply rolled her eyes and went back to obsessively adjusting their final jar for its closeup, sprinkling a few more rolled oats across the table for effect and drizzling a little melted peanut butter to cling enticingly to the lip of the jar.

"You workin' today, my dude?" Blaine asked after setting the tubes on the drying rack. "I might ask you to bring me back some of that maple-bacon flavored popcorn. It goes so well with my Premature Ejacudrafter."

"I am, and sure, I can grab you some." He turned to Anya, who had begun cleaning up. "You need anything?"

"Well I don't _need_ anything, but we are criminally low on cooking wine, to say nothing of the drinkable stock." She sniffed, and glared at Blaine with so much implied violence that Soul was surprised all of his bones didn't break on the spot. " _Someone_ thought it had all gone bad and put it down the drain."

"I mean, now I know that wine kind of _is_ rotten grape juice, so I was technically correct. But don't you worry your primped little head - I won't touch your bitter grape tears anymore. Me 'n ol' Keggy here got a date making sweet, sweet barley juice tonight."

"Must you phrase it that way?" Soul sighed, knowing full well that yes, he must.

"Listen, this next batch is gonna be amazing." Blaine leaned back against the counter on his elbows and finger-gunned at them. "It's an imperial red, so what do you think of calling it 'Redheaded Stepchild?'"

"No," they said in unison, meeting each other in the middle with their eyerolls.

"Aight, I'll keep working on it." He saluted and sauntered back into his room.

"Why do you put up with him?" Anya hissed, shooting a final acid glance at Blaine's door. "He thought merlot was a _wizard._ "

Soul cringed at that particular memory, and said, "He has a good heart. And he's loyal and dependable at his core, once you dig through all...that."

"Whatever you say," she replied with the raised eyebrows that meant 'I don't believe you in the slightest.' "Let's wrap up this shoot, okay hon? Then you can be out and on your way."

"Yeah. I'll format the rest of what I've written to go along with this tomorrow, and then post it."

Cleaning up after a shoot was also something Soul enjoyed. It required eating the food that was just photographed as long as no invasive methods were used to make it look nice, and Soul had learned by sharing meals with Anya that dinner needn't be a stressful, tense affair. It could be a time to unwind, exchange stories, even laugh; a part of Soul's spirit that had been severely neglected felt nourished after meals spent in good company. And since he'd only had black coffee for breakfast, a proper meal sounded fantastic.

Soul picked up one of the jars and took a seat at the couch. Around a spoonful of maple almond butter oats, he said, "Nice work with the shoot. That extra drizzle of honey and nut butter on those jars was a good call."

"You obviously don't keep me around _just_ for my looks and impeccable taste in cabernet," she said primly, hiding her smile behind a delicate dab of her napkin.

The opening measures of _Flight of the Bumblebee_ began to play from Soul's pocket, its frenetic melody his final reminder to get ready for work.

"Back to the grind, mm?" Anya said and gave a critical eye to what was left to clean up. "Don't worry about the rest of this, I'll see to it."

"You're the best, I'll make you that coq au vin this weekend," Soul said while he rushed back to his room to change and maybe do something to his hair so it'd stop falling into his face.

"I'll hold you to that!" she called after him.

Wallet, keys, phone, Hawaiian shirt; he was good to go. He threw on some non-slip shoes and walked back out through the living room and kitchen divide towards the front door.

"Have a good day, darling," Anya said from the sink, drying her hands on a delicately embroidered dish towel so she could come over and press a chaste kiss onto each of his cheeks. "And don't forget the wine."

"Wouldn't dream of it," he replied, returning her cheek kisses. "See you tonight."

Trader Moe's was a relatively quick motorcycle ride away from their apartment, not as close as the one in their neighborhood but still less than twenty minutes by bike. A big bonus was that it was on the Charles river, which wound around the southern side of Cambridgeport. Being near the water was important to him in an intangible way, like needing to feel the sun on your face or the warmth of another living being.

It probably had something to do with all of the time he'd spent chasing seagulls as a boy on sheltered Connecticut beaches, never allowed to go into the water for fear of contamination in the Sound but finding himself at the water's edge regardless, tiny hands marvelling at the texture of the salt water and the little glass gems it gifted him; the ocean had always felt like a friend just waiting for an introduction.

He arrived ten minutes before his scheduled shift, so Soul went into the break room to put his things in one of the lockers. He'd barely finished locking his motorcycle and apartment keys away when the door opened and closed in swift succession and a deep, slightly harried, voice spoke up.

"Nice to see you in so early, Evans," Giriko said, looking down his nose at him through lensless frames. "It's shaping up to be a busy day - there's a local block party happening in a few hours so you know people're gonna be in for last minute things - and I'm expecting everything to be josey. Will it be josey, Evans?"

"Aye aye, Captain," Soul replied without turning around. His manager, for all of the slicked back hair and freshly pressed Hawaiian shirts, had been something of a small-scale crime magnate before his arrest and subsequent release for good behavior. At least, that was what he'd gleaned from a blurry mug shot and a few small press releases that Blaine shoved at him after learning who he was working under; a native Bostonian, Blaine had eyes and ears in all of the gossip rings, and never missed a chance to pass on any juicy tidbits.

His boss had had some nose piercing back then, though.

"You're working produce today," Giriko continued, straightening his glasses with an annoyed flick of his fingers. "I don't want Kim flirting with that chef who comes in."

"Aye aye, captain," Soul repeated as he headed out of the break room, wanting nothing more than to spend some time with quiet, undemanding produce.

The next few hours passed in a blur of college students looking for three dollar wine and harried mothers up to their elbows in fruit leather and sandwich fixings. Soul replaced the produce as it was purchased and fixed the displays that were destroyed by people who just _had_ to have the apple at the bottom of the pyramid.

He was just testing the structural integrity of his sweet potato tower when a young child laugh-screamed behind him and something knocked him face-first into the display.

"What the-" he sputtered, straightening up and looking with dismay at all of his hard work gone to waste.

"I'm so sorry!" A young woman was on the floor at his feet, the laces of her shoes tied together in a giant tangle. A man with hair longer than Soul's was kneeling nearby to speak to a little girl, presumably his daughter by the tired familiarity in the lecture he had begun to give her.

"Just because you learned how to tie your shoes doesn't mean it's okay to go tying other people's," he told her sternly, while she giggled and kicked her feet in a lizard onesie that was a little too big. "Now apologize to the nice lady, Angela."

"I'm sorry I tied your shoes for you!" the little girl said before skipping back to her father and tugging on his hand to go.

"I'm very sorry about all this," the man said to the woman with a tired sigh. "She's at the age where she likes to test me, and it looks like that now involves innocent bystanders."

"I'll be fine," she said, still picking at the knots the little girl had tied.

"We'll get this cleaned up," Soul added, glancing down at the woman. "You sure you're okay?"

"Yes, I have ten years of jiu jitsu under my belt, falls aren't a problem - oh, hi." She looked up at him with sea green eyes full of recognition, and - _oh_ , that was it, she was the girl from the herb aisle.

"Hello again," he said, belatedly offering her a hand to help her up. "We should uh, probably invest in some helmets or something if we're gonna keep meeting like this."

Her laugh was a lot stronger than he'd have expected from such a tiny frame - there was no way she could be more than five feet tall - as she dusted off her thighs with a few brusque pats. "That or maybe pick a different section of the store." She had a well-practiced quirk to her lips that made him wonder if she spent a lot of time hiding her smile.

He opened his mouth to say something in agreement, but was distracted by a shock of cerulean hair making a beeline for him through the crowd. What came out instead was, "What do _you_ want," which made the woman blanch as though she'd been slapped. "Er, not you miss, I was talking to my roommate-" He gestured helplessly to the space above her head, where Blaine was watching this exchange with interest.

"Looks like you've still got the people skills of a pineapple, my man," he said, stepping over to stand by Soul and give him a conciliatory clap on the shoulder. To the woman, he said, "I don't mean to interrupt whatever awkward whale noises he may have been trying to make, but d'you mind if I redirect the conversation for a sec?"

She was too busy staring at the reed sticking out of his mouth like an oversized toothpick and the very large bass saxophone hanging off of his back to reply, so he beamed at her and said, "Great! Soul, my bro, my dude from another nude, will you _please_ come to my show at TITs this weekend? This is a chance for the Skadew Valleygirls to really take off, but we need as many people watching as possible to make sure we're invited back."

Soul sighed and fiddled with a strand of hair that had come loose from his ponytail. "I don't know, Anya and I have a lot of prep work to do this weekend-"

"Just do it now and get it over with, please, I'm begging you." He dropped down to one knee, hands clasped over his heart. "Bro-bi wan Kenobi, you're my only hope."

Soul glanced at all the people giving them curious looks and hissed, "I don't think it'll happen, sorry man, but I have work to do now so could we talk about this later?"

Blaine stood up slowly and shook his head. "I didn't want to have to do this, but since my most loyal fans won't be able to make it, I guess I'll have to attract some new ones." He then unslung the saxophone from his back and gave the reed in his mouth an extra pass across his lips before he attached it to the mouthpiece with a sorrowful expression.

Soul's eyes went wide. "You wouldn't."

The opening cacophony of his band's single "Never Trust Lukewarm Breadsticks" blasted from his saxophone in answer as he started to hop around like hot coals were under his feet. Once everyone in the vicinity had turned to look at this new source of disturbance, Soul waved in his face and said, "Okay, okay! I'll go to your show, now can you please leave before you get me fired?"

One final minute of jazz scatting later, Blaine caught the quarter an elderly gentleman tossed him and winked at Soul. "Glad we could come to an understanding. And you there," he pointed at the woman that Soul was amazed had stayed for this whole debacle and said, "You're welcome too! Bring your friends, bring your friends' friends, bring your parents. It's gonna be a party, right down the road at Tavern In The Square in Allston."

She looked like she was debating which vital organ she wanted to stab in him first. "I don't know you, you nearly blew out my eardrums with that noise, and you delayed my shopping trip by seven minutes that I'm never getting back. Goodbye."

"Hang on, what's your name? I'll dedicate our first song to you if you come," he said with an easy smile, used to charming almost everyone he met. But judging by the tightness in her jaw and the fire in her eyes, she wasn't about to let him get away with his usual routine.

"You do not need to know my name because I will not be coming to this event," she said, biting off each word before stooping to pick up her basket that Soul noted was filled with the ingredients for his take on chicken stir-fry. "If you'll excuse me."

She began to walk away with her head held high, and Soul could have let it end there, could have simply watched her leave and never bothered her again, but something about the way she used her anger as armor made him blurt, "You're gonna wanna use more fresh ginger."

Those green eyes turned to meet his, startled. He continued, sure he must sound as crazy as he felt. "For the stir-fry, I mean, since it looks like you're using a recipe I'm familiar with. That tiny nub won't get you very far for the amount of chicken you have, and I-" he paused, floundering. "I want you to enjoy the food you make," he finished lamely, surprised to find he meant what he said.

"Thank you," she said, and something shifted in her expression. "Have a nice day."

Soul watched her pick up more ginger before heading deeper into the store.

"You always seem to attract the weirdos," Blaine observed from his elbow, absently stroking the side of his saxophone. "Anyway, come help me find those bacon chips - a man's gotta eat, and you don't feed me as well as you do Anya."

"We are literally having a celebratory dinner for you and Kid tonight," Soul said, still turning over that strange look in the woman's eyes. Was it surprise at someone talking to her after she had made it clear she was mad? Revulsion at someone creeping on her shopping cart? Or something else, something harder to quantify?

It took a hearty shove from Blaine to get him moving again, so he just rolled his shoulders and headed towards the snack aisle. Whether or not that woman wanted to keep people at arm's length was no concern of his, although it did make something in his chest ache at the memory of how many years he spent living like that, too.

The rest of his shift was much quieter after Blaine left, and as he clocked out he grabbed Anya's wine from the liquor section before heading home to the rich smells of a pot roast the moment he was through the door.

"Bon retour," Anya said from the kitchen, where she was washing and chopping romaine for a salad. "Have a good day?"

Soul considered mentioning Blaine's saxophone interlude, but decided against it. "Spirited," he said instead, and set the wine down on the counter near the fridge. "I got you some chardonnay and a cab, I wasn't sure what you'd be in the mood to drink tonight."

"Wonderful! Let's do the cab, that'll go nicely with supper." She resumed her chopping, and after Soul changed out of his work clothes into a more dinner-party-appropriate button-down, he joined her in finishing up the side dishes.

There were some boiled potatoes sitting out to be mashed in a freshly drained pot on the stove, so Soul assembled his add-ins, grabbed the mashing tool, and started in on them. After a few minutes of steady smashing, the potatoes were crushed enough that generous helpings of butter and salt mixed in easily, as did a few splashes of cream. Just a touch of herbe de provence to echo the savory notes in the roast, and they were done.

A quick sniff told him the roast was near completion, too, the herbal smells of rosemary and thyme twining themselves around the richer, earthier tones of the root vegetables to give it an overall Christmas feel.

Wes loved Christmas. A small pang, swiftly silenced.

"Would you decant the wine?" Anya asked over the whisking sounds of a dressing coming together.

Soul obliged, and set aside all thoughts of his brother so he could attend to the wine. It was a Montoya cabernet from 2012, with good legs and notes of plum and black cherry on the mid-palate that he loved. Memories of a more full-bodied red on a frigid February night in Paris came to mind, and he smiled; red wine always tasted like friendship.

The door to the apartment opened and admitted Blaine and Kid. "Hello party people, your kings have arrived." Blaine sniffed the air and added, "That meat I smell?"

Tight-lipped, Anya said, "Yes, and a very good cut, I might add. Farmer Tsu positively spoiled us this last cow-share, and I won't have anyone wolf it down like a common hamburger." A timer rang behind her and she jumped a little, casting a fretful eye at the bare dining room table. "And I still need to set the table," she murmured, more to herself than anyone in particular, but Kid detached himself from Blaine's aggressive handholding and said, "I'll do it. Father was always particular with how his table was set."

"That would be a big help, thank you," Anya said slowly, eyeing the piercings below his lips and the peculiar stripes of white in his hair with almost-masked apprehension. "Let me show you where everything is."

With such tasks delegated, it wasn't long before the roast was out of the oven and all side dishes plated and ready to be brought to the table. Anya's eyes widened when she saw Kid's work on the table; the salad and dessert spoons were exactly where they should be, and the glasses were each precisely three inches to the left of the coffee cups. She stopped to pick up a wine glass and held it to the light. "Reidel," she said wonderingly, shooting him a glance. "I didn't show you where we kept the nice glassware. How..?"

"My father thought it prudent to see that I was raised in accordance with my station," he replied with no small measure of distaste, and flicked the shoulder of his studded double-breasted jacket as if to rid it of a speck of dust. "I saw the decanter and knew you must have matching glasses somewhere. It was but one of many mannered skills he thought I ought to have."

Anya looked at him with a new measure of respect when she led him to the table to be seated, and offered him first pour of the cabernet.

"Oh, no thank you, Father was always clear about abstaining from alcohol at dinner parties."

Blaine sat next to him and gave him a small nudge. "Dude, your dad's not here, live a little."

That seemed to be something Kid had not considered, and a small but savage grin revealed a set of perfectly straight teeth. "Yes, you're right. One glass won't hurt."

/

"And that is how I almost righted the financial crisis of '08 with an IM 6800 and a recording of Obama's inauguration speech," Kid said, gesturing magnanimously around the table with his wine glass before raising it to his flushed face for another sip.

"He's so cool, right?" Blaine whispered to Soul over the lip of his beer mug, affection etched into the set of his smile and the sparkle in his eyes.

"He's definitely something," Soul replied, setting down his knife and fork. The meal had been a relaxed affair, full of laughter and the merry tinkling of silverware on plates. Dinners like these fed something deep within him, an emptiness that always clawed at his heart for _more_ without specifying what it wanted.

They also reminded him of what he had left behind.

"I'd like to propose a toast," Anya said, tottering to her feet with a smile as large as Blaine's and a flush as deep as Kid's. "To your continued happiness and togetherness."

Soul raised his glass to this, as did Kid, but Blaine rolled his eyes. "Y'all toast to everything, what's up with that?"

Soul almost missed the small glance Anya flicked his way. "There are many things in life worth celebrating, and far too often we don't realize that until we can't anymore."

With a shrug and a small belch that only went unpunished due to Anya's level of intoxication, Blaine raised his glass as well.

"To happiness," she said, and they toasted.

The next hour or so was spent in leisurely conversation, in which Soul learned that Kid had gone to the same private high school he had. He almost asked what Kid's father's name was, but then decided that he didn't really want to go down the potentially hazardous road of how their parents might know each other or if Kid had any siblings Wes might have slept with; ignorance truly was bliss.

"And what about you, Soul?" Kid asked, now comfortably propped against Blaine's side. "Where did you go to college, and what are you doing now?"

Blaine and Anya froze, shooting each other worried looks across the table while Soul collected his thoughts. It had been a while since he'd last had to answer this question, and since it was clear that Kid was intended to be a permanent part of Blaine's life, he couldn't give his usual glib answer.

He took a breath. "I played piano. Then I didn't." The sudden lump in his throat wouldn't let him say anything else as memories rushed back of how cold the fallboard felt beneath his shaking fingers the night he decided he'd had enough.

Silence met his words. Kid blinked twice, slowly, realizing through the wine that a line had been crossed.

Before Anya or Blaine could jump in and try to fix things, Soul cleared his throat and said, "But anyway, now I run a food blog and work part-time at Trader Moe's. Life's good and all that. Anyone want dessert?"

He hardly waited for Blaine to raise a hand before heading into the kitchen. There was still half of an apple tart he'd made a few days ago leftover in the fridge, and he busied himself taking it out and assembling the necessary accompaniments.

His phone began to buzz while he plated the delicate slices with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and a swirl of whipped cream, but a look at the caller ID made him tighten his jaw and ignore it in favor of grabbing a few sprigs of mint for garnish.

Some things were better left untouched.

Soul brought out the tart for Blaine and Kid along with a scoop of ice cream for Anya since she preferred only a small sweetness after a large meal.

"Nothing for you?" she asked, that gut-twisting blend of calculation and worry back behind her eyes.

"No thank you, I'm full. I'm exhausted after all the wine and good company, though, so I'm going to bed. Enjoy the rest of your night." He brought his dishes into the kitchen and then doubled back towards his room, hoping his smile was normal enough to fool Anya. He wasn't confident it was.

The cool, quiet darkness of his room was a relief after so much time spent trying to be normal and polite. His body felt limp, heavy, like the weight of simple gravity was now too much to bear. A quiet kind of numbness settled into him, and with casual indifference he brushed aside Mind-Anya's admonition that he should at least brush his teeth.

Soul dragged his phone out of his pocket, intending to set his alarm and ride this wave of exhaustion into sleep, but then the voicemail notification caught his eye. As deliberately as he did every time he got a voicemail from this person, he went into his phone app and deleted the message.

Maybe one day he'd be able to talk to Wes.

Thoughts of his brother snipped the final invisible thread holding back the endless chorus of _not good enough_ that was never far from his thoughts, and then it was all he could do to remember how to breathe. The crushing weight of every mistake he'd ever made, of all the food and water and resources that could have gone to someone _more worthy_ bore down on him with enough force that his fist was in his mouth before he could stop himself; what was one more hurt compared to the howling emptiness that always found him, no matter how many friends were near?

Pain shocked him back to the present. Without needing to look, he knew there'd be two ragged semicircles in the flesh above and below the first knuckles of his hand. A familiar rush of shame and relief overtook him - relief that he no longer felt like he would vomit from the force of his sadness and shame that it took something so drastic and so _wrong_ to achieve that peace. Face wet and most of him still shaking, he rolled closer to the wall. Getting better was something he'd have to accept he couldn't do.

He fell asleep cradling his throbbing hand, the taste of blood still fresh in his mouth.


	3. 3

**3: I'm afraid that I've built myself so tall, no one will see me when I'm falling**

"What smells so good?"

Maka turned away from the large pile of chicken and vegetables she was stirring to grin at Harvar. "Chicken stir-fry. I think it's coming along rather well."

He moved closer to take a look. "Looks good, too," he said in the grudging tones of a man who'd proven himself wrong.

"Don't sound so surprised. Want to join me? It's been awhile since we've eaten together."

"Don't have to ask me twice. I'll end my stream early." He hurried out of the kitchen towards his bedroom, and Maka allowed herself a small modicum of pride - it wasn't easy to draw Harvar away from his computer for anything, let alone a meal she'd cooked.

The sizzling pan brought her attention back to stirring; it was almost time to add the eggs and soy sauce, judging by the firmness of the chicken and the browning along the edges of the vegetables. Already the spicy smell of ginger blended with the more savory chicken and onion, and a glance at her phone told her the brown rice would be ready in five minutes.

Cooking was not too different from following any other directions, and that was an area in which she excelled. A satisfying thrill ran through her - here, she was in total control. She could arrange for the rice to be done an hour before the chicken or ten minutes after; she could add vegetables or keep it only meat and rice. It was strangely comforting, and reminded her of the story that had accompanied this recipe, about how the author used to pretend all of the dishes they made were different sections of an orchestra they were conducting. Maka smiled, and kept stirring.

Harvar set them a simple table of bowls and chopsticks while Maka brought out the steaming stir fry in a porcelain bowl. She glared at Harvar's soda, but kept herself to a glass of water; the evidence of how harmful sugar was to the body was still too fresh in her mind.

The only sounds to be heard once they served themselves were small appreciative noises while they devoured their first plate, and it was only once they were halfway through their second that they paused long enough for conversation.

"So then I back-capped the point as Soldier, and nobody even cared because they were so busy trying to shoot my ulting Mercy." Harvar finished the story by folding his hands over his chest and shaking his head at his opponents' folly.

Maka took her final bite of stir-fry and sat back with a contented sigh. "I'd need to watch you play to understand even half of what that means."

Harvar shrugged, twirling his chopsticks through and around his fingers in a dizzying display of dexterity. "Probably. You _should_ come watch me sometime, I'll make you a stream mod and you can ban all the misogynist fuckboys for me."

"Maybe during winter break," she said, glancing at the stack of books waiting for her on the coffee table. "I'm a bit preoccupied until then."

Harvar sighed and looked at her with a directness that made her uneasy. "Look, I'm tired of sitting here pretending not to see you burn yourself out. You have to relax sometimes, do things for fun instead of because you have to or because you think you should."

Maka stiffened. "I'm not burning myself out. I have a perfectly manageable workload, and I have _plenty_ of fun. Just yesterday I took apart all of our appliances and gave them a deep clean with a toothbrush, baking soda, and vinegar." At his level look, she added, "It _fizzed_ , Harv."

"You've been up until three the last few nights," he said, unimpressed.

"There's a lot to read in law school. If my classmates can do it, then so can I," Maka said, the embers of her anger at her classmate who stole her high score flaring to life.

"It isn't healthy. I've known you for a long time, Maka. This shit is devouring you."

"Don't be so dramatic," she said through a yawn. "I'll be fine."

The flash of sadness in his eyes chilled her when he said, "I hope so."

Harvar helped her clear the table, and then rested his hand briefly on her shoulder on the way to his room. Maka caught a hint of color out of her peripherals where his hand had been, and found a small post-it note that said 'My door is always open.'

The words made something tighten painfully in her chest, but she took control of herself with a deep breath and vigorous leftover packaging. Everything was fine. She had a plan. Harvar's care was well-meant if misplaced, because she was on top of _everything_ that went on in her life. Her eating had been a problem; she'd listened to reason, diagnosed it, and solved it. So it went for everything in her life.

As if to prove her point, her phone pinged an email alert. That should be a group member from her Administrative Law class with his part of the assignment for her to look over. All she'd need to do was add her part, proofread the whole thing (after Homophone Man, she never trusted anyone to have the last look at a group project), and submit it. They'd even be a day early if she finished it tonight.

But when Maka opened up her email, her heart lodged in her throat.

The sender was Suzume Albarn.

Adrenaline made her fingers shake as Maka opened the email. There, complete with the insignia of Aranea Associates, LLP, was a longer message than she'd gotten from her mother in over five years.

 _Maka,_

 _It is past time to prepare you for the workforce. I had been hoping that you'd reach out to me of your own accord by now, but we will discuss your lack of ambition later. My firm will soon begin seeking interns to manage the additional A-list caseloads we've been receiving. Normally, these are positions for an associate, not one still in school, but the higher-ups know my work and are extending the courtesy of interviewing you after winter break. They are doing this on my word that you will be a stellar candidate._

 _Send me a status report about how your first year has gone by next week so I can determine how best to shore up your weaknesses; you were always prone to letting emotion cloud your logic when you thought something wasn't 'fair.' You must always remember that we do not make the laws, but merely enforce them._

 _I trust you will continue to outshine your classmates._

 _S_

Maka didn't realize she'd started pacing until she nearly tripped on her laptop's charging cord on the other side of the room. This was fine. This was good. Mama didn't reach out unless it was important, and therefore she thought Maka's future was important. Except Mama thought she wasn't ambitious enough... _was_ she losing her edge? Was that test she came in fifth for the first felled domino in an ever-cascading line of future mediocrity?

It was hard to breathe again. Maka increased her path to include the kitchen and her bedroom, but she was still getting lightheaded and the walls were starting to press in on her like a tomb.

She needed to leave.

The next few minutes felt like they happened to someone else. Maka shoved her shoes on with claw-like fingers, grabbed her jacket, stared at Harvar's bright red goggles while she said she was going for a walk, and drifted out the door.

Stepping into the cool night air felt like breaching the surface of the water after spending too much time beneath it, and she gulped it in like she'd just sprinted a mile. The more she walked, the more she could catch her breath, so she took off in a random direction and tried to focus on everything but the sensation that her lungs were never full enough. She'd learned long ago that too much attention on it seemed to make these dizzy spells worse, because noticing the wrongness amplified it tenfold. That was easier said than done, though, and it was only when she heard the noise and chatter of a large number of people that she realized she had walked far from home.

The sounds were coming from a bar across the street. People were going in and out at regular intervals, and each time the doors opened a fresh wave of merry conversation spilled over. Maka had never been one for bars; she only accompanied friends in undergrad a few times to play bouncer and to make sure they got home safely. The thought of being around so many people in various stages of intoxication was usually enough to keep her home with her nose in a book, but tonight she couldn't bear to be alone.

So she crossed the street and walked in under the red awning, holding the door for a gaggle of underage teens with the sullen look of those whose illegal drinking plans had been foiled. The space inside was tastefully lit with stylish track lights above the bar and along the restaurant seating area, while the smell of fried foods and roasted meat filled the air. Maka was surprised to see that the other seating area had been cleared, making space for the band playing on the small stage opposite the bar. There was already a crowd of people kicking and punching the air to the kind of frenetic, horn-filled music she remembered a small but rabid segment of her high school enjoying.

Not wanting to be alone at a table, Maka walked up to a quieter end of the bar and sat down, swiveling her stool around to people-watch. She'd cool her head here for a bit, shake off whatever had been her problem earlier, and then go back to finish her assignment. Easy.

She pulled out her phone to continue looking through the Vieille Cafetière archived posts that she was steadily chipping away at, and felt the knot in her chest loosen, just a little, as she read.

"First one's on the house," a cheerful voice said from behind her, and she turned around to see a young woman wearing multiple neon tank tops and glow stick bracelets push a drink her way.

"Oh, thanks?" Maka said, accepting the highball glass with a dubious glance at the cinnamon stick poking over the rim. "What is it, exactly?"

"Cin City," the bartender said with a mischievous wink, filling a few glasses to the brim with pineapple juice and tequila before handing them off to a woman a few seats down. "Are you sad you missed the first band? That why you look so blue?"

The question, along with the young woman's easy directness, startled Maka. Was it _that_ obvious something wasn't right? Mama would be appalled at her lack of control; cases have been lost because of far less. With a deep breath and a smile made genuine by focusing on the bartender's Hello Kitty earrings, Maka said, "No, it's not that. But thanks for the drink." She took a polite sip and almost gagged - was that _bubblegum vodka_ mixed with fireball and apple cider?

"Are you still messing with the new people, Patty?" a deep voice said to her left, full of that amused rebuke reserved for longtime friends.

Patty made a show of pouting while she tossed a bottle of gin behind her back, speedy hands pouring a glass of tonic before she caught the airborne bottle with her other hand. She topped it off and scooted it towards the man who now sat down beside her, but wait -

"You!" Maka blurted, surprise marring her usually stellar resting glare as she looked at the man she'd quite literally run into twice before.

His eyes widened in recognition, the wine red of his button-down shirt a sharp contrast to the paleness of his hair that was once again pulled back behind his head.

"Yep, that's Soul all right, the biggest killjoy I know," Patty said, in the middle of preparing a line of shot glasses that spanned half the bar.

"So what brings you here, uh." Soul tugged on his ponytail when he realized he didn't know her name.

"Maka," she supplied, and raised her drink to take a sip.

"Maka," he repeated to himself, and she found herself momentarily distracted by how his voice reverberated in her chest. "I didn't think you'd show up to watch Blaine play after the other day."

She sat up straighter and glanced around. "That's tonight? Here?"

At his nod, Maka sighed and lifted a shoulder. "Well, it'll take more than bad saxophone playing to make me want to leave so soon after getting here." She thought of her laptop, left open with seven case analyses in the tabs, and of her inbox, branded with her mother's missive at the top, and suddenly Maka didn't want to think about anything anymore. She tilted back her glass to pour the rest of her drink down her throat and hoped that speed would lessen the cloying, burning sweetness. "I'm ready for another surprise, Patty."

Patty whooped and danced her way over to grab a small stool - "You're top shelf material, baby!" - while Soul looked at her with poorly masked concern.

"Got a lot going on?" he asked, settling into the seat beside her and taking a chaste sip of his gin and tonic.

"Nothing I can't handle," she said, accepting Patty's newest concoction with a grateful nod before throwing half of it back in one go. "Delicious," she rasped, the herbal flavors of gin and root beer more than overwhelming her taste buds.

"Go bother your other patrons," Soul told Patty with a smile kind enough to take the edge off his words.

She pulled down the skin under her eyes and stuck out her tongue, but complied.

There was silence for a time while Maka stared at the rows of liquor lining the back shelf and refused to give in to the simmering panic in her gut that screamed _you're wasting time!_ Each sip of her drink seemed to help, though, and with a quickly-snuffed pang of empathy, she thought that maybe her father's habit wasn't so terrible after all.

"So. You uh, you like ska?" Soul asked, eyes flickering between her and her rapidly disappearing drink.

"Not really," she said, spilling some of it down her chin in her haste to answer. Perhaps this was stronger than she'd anticipated, but there was no way a few drinks could get through her iron self-control.

Her answer made Soul frown. "Then why are you here?"

How dare he remind her of the tabs, the work, the _pressure?_ No, that wouldn't do at all, so she recalled Patty for a new concoction instead of answering him and noticed how he shifted towards her, like he thought he could protect her from the bartender by sheer proximity. His concern made her feel powerful, like she could cut herself and he'd bleed for her, so she smiled over the rim of her new glass and patted his clenched fist.

"I'm here because it's better than being there," she said, and proceeded to grin at the absurdity of her entire night, or maybe her entire _existence_ , and then, with the cartoonish clarity of a light bulb shining above her head, she realized she was _drunk_. It was impossible to contain the little fit of giggles that bubbled out of her because _what if Mama could see her now?_ Maybe then she wouldn't keep trying to force her into corporate law; maybe then she'd step back enough to see that Maka had her own ideas and her own goals.

Those traitorous thoughts couldn't do more than bloom, though, because Soul looked her in the eye and asked with that low, low voice, "What're you running from?" It was soft enough he could have been talking to himself, but the way he looked at her like he thought he could _understand_ incensed her; she didn't need his pity, this wasn't therapy hour, and Maka Albarn didn't run from _anything._

An explosion of brassy sound blared from the stage before Maka could lay into him, and then Blaine was waving cheerfully at the crowd with his ridiculous blue hair and bulging saxophone. "Good evening Brighton! We're the Skadew Valleygirls, and we're gonna tear this motherfucker down."

The pink-haired drummer yowled and launched into a rib-rattling refrain that Blaine wasted no time in joining as he hop-shuffled along the stage between bursts of the loudest saxophone playing Maka had ever heard.

Maka managed to just listen for a while, Soul's transgressions forgotten in the wall of sound that engulfed her. Soon she could make out the lyrics Blaine was scream-singing at a rapper's clip, and then she started bobbing along to the music's defiant positivity, at such odds with the bittersweetness of the lyrics; it scratched something in her she didn't realize needed to be acknowledged. She got rid of the tightness in her throat by finishing the next drink Patty brought her and sizing up the man who had wandered over to sit on the other side of Soul during the last song. Soul had taken to scowling at everyone who approached her as though she were some incompetent floozy in need of protection; well, it was time to show _him_ that she was an adult perfectly capable of denying or instigating romantic encounters on her own.

"So, beanpole, what're your thoughts on the patriarchy?" Maka asked this new person, leaning heavily on the bar to peer around Soul's slouched form.

New Man gave her a concerned glance and licked his lips, which made the twin piercings below them glimmer in the low light. "Are you quite all right, miss?" he asked, and then had the gall to look at Soul, as if he were her keeper.

"She's had a lot to drink," Soul said with a small tug on his ponytail. Maka glared at him down her nose as best she could given his obscene height.

"Says you," she said, most definitely _not_ almost knocking over the untouched glass of water Soul kept nudging her way. "'m perfectly tapable of caking care of myself."

"Of course you are," he said easily, wrapping her hand around the water glass and bringing it to her lips. "Look, you know how important it is to stay hydrated when you drink."

She spluttered on the second gulp, her fuzzy thoughts catching up to the fact that he was treating her like a recalcitrant toddler. "Don't need your help," she gasped, raising her arm to wipe her mouth but only managing to slow-motion slap herself in the face.

"You're right; you need to learn how to pace yourself," he muttered, waving Patty over to get another glass of water and tell her Maka was to be cut off.

"You're not the boss of me. Patty, 'nother please," Maka said with as much dignity as she could muster, not really wanting to have more to drink but _definitely_ not wanting to let Soul think he knew better.

Patty glanced between them and threw up her arms in a giant X. "Sorry chica, no can do; last call was ten minutes ago."

"But that guy just got a drink." Maka pointed to the man next to Soul as he took the first sip of something neon-colored in a martini glass.

"Hang on, I think bossman's calling!" Patty slid away around the other side of the bar and left Maka with a relieved-looking Soul and the mysterious New Man.

"Why're you doing this, anyway?" Maka asked, anger at being out-maneuvered finding a suitable target in Soul. "You don't know me. 'm nothing to you."

He considered her for a moment. "You're the girl with terrible spatial awareness who comes into Trader Moe's looking at her grocery list like it's going to bite her." He reached out to put her hand back on the water glass, and this time the heat from his palm sank into her like a balm. "I'm doing this because it's the right thing to do."

Unacceptable. Through the strange, underwater feeling of her drunkenness, Maka tried to reconcile his words with what she knew to be the truth, because Mama told her so - that most men were liars, cheaters, and completely untrustworthy. But she couldn't shake the small voice that told her to _give in_ , to _trust someone_ , just this once.

She stood up.

With a giant, lurching step, Maka started towards the stage and away from this ponytailed man who made her doubt herself.

Soul yelled something after her, but she paid him no mind. The crowd quickly swallowed her whole, and she dove into the kicking, hooting mass with abandon. Here she could forget about her Mama, forget about Soul, and just move.

She found herself right up against the stage after a particularly intense bout of wiggling to the beat, and when Blaine finished the song, he raised a fist and grinned at the crowd. His expression turned to one of elated surprise when he met her eyes and hollered, "Grocery girl?" before reaching out a hand to tug her onstage. "I never thought you'd show up!"

"I had a change of heart," she said with what she hoped was a sly grin, her prior impatience with the saxophone player forgotten as her gaze traitorously sought out Soul back at the bar.

"Well, then let's make it worth your while. Kim!" The drummer gave a lewd catcall in return. "This next one's for my girl!"

Kim whooped and set out a frantic beat that Blaine collided with head-on in an impressive, hop-skipping saxophone solo. Maka, at this point seeing everything as though through a thick pane of glass, started hopping along, too, because here she felt alive and free, here she could be seen and recognized, here she was a part of something great and loud and never ending.

When she joined Blaine at the edge of the stage, letting him dip her in one arm while still managing to play his saxophone with the other, she could feel Soul's disapproving eyes on her back. Well, let him judge, she thought, taking Blaine's hand and turning with him away from the crowd. Let him see her as she truly was: a woman in full control of her life and her decisions.

She fell back into the crowd's waiting arms.

/

There were hands on her, too many hands; someone wanted her to tell him where she lived; someone _else_ tried to carry her; her knuckles were sore; voices of various timbres - three? four? - buzzed around her in argumentative and worried tones.

Then she was being eased into a wide, soft bed that smelled of little lavender soaps, and she remembered nothing more.

/

It was far too bright. The sunlight on the inside of her eyelids _burned_ , burrowing into her skull like molten nails that made her both desperately wish to be unconscious and keenly aware of how impossible that now was. Nausea, cramps, headache - could she have given herself food poisoning from the stir-fry?

A stronger wave of nausea made her realize she had to get to the bathroom and _fast_ , but when she threw her feet onto the floor to get up, a muffled groan erupted from beneath them.

If Maka weren't feeling so sick, she would have had a better way to deal with this strange man on her floor than staring at him and swallowing repeatedly - wait, no, this _couldn't_ be her room, she didn't leave clothing strewn about like newspaper in a gerbil's cage nor line her windowsill with jars of seaglass - and at second glance, this man wasn't strange.

"Soul, what are you doing on my - whoever's this is - floor?" she asked as calmly as she could while fighting the urge to vomit.

He gave her a baleful look, hair a flattened, matted mess, but what really caught her attention was the brilliant black eye shading the right side of his face, and the dried blood surrounding his split lip. "You seriously don't remember? Well, I guess you _were_ trying to win the World's Worst Decision Maker award." He winced and brought a hand to his lip, which had cracked and begun to bleed. "Long story short, you got wasted, refused to tell us where you lived, and then went all Fight Club when we tried to bring you back with us."

Maka had many more questions, but knowing the cause of her discomfort only seemed to magnify it, so she said, through a very tight mouth, "Do you have a bathroom?"

Soul stared at her for a moment, having clearly expected an argument, until the urgency of what she was asking caught up with him. He nodded, winced at the motion, and led her out of the room through a short hallway that had tasteful flower arrangements on small end tables. "I'll get you some water," he called once she was in the bathroom and had emptied her stomach once.

She sat poised on the white-tiled floor next to the toilet, an odd vertigo-nausea making the thought of standing supremely undesirable, so she stayed as still as she could while miserable and full of regret. Her phone sat dead in her pocket, but thinking about Harvar and however many worried texts he might have sent did not help her nausea one bit. It was getting uncomfortable to prop herself against the toilet, so slowly, _very_ slowly, she looked around the bathroom. There was what appeared to be a hand-knitted doily on the back of the toilet with a small reed diffuser on top, and the shower curtain also appeared to be hand-made. Three towels hung from gold-banded hooks on the door: one black and pilling, one a rich cream color that looked thick and soft, and a small slip of a towel filled with the leering faces of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Well then.

"For future reference, never trust Patty to get you drunk. She loves sugary things and inflicting them upon people she likes, which is pretty much the worst way to show affection I've ever seen."

Soul's voice rumbled to her from the other side of the door. Alarmed, she said, "Have you been out there the whole time?"

His pause was a beat too long. "Not really. I was just checking in." Another pause. "And you drank _a lot_ for such a tiny person - for all I know you could be going into a coma in there," he added, somewhat defensively.

"I can take care of myself," she replied through gritted teeth, flushing the toilet to cover the sound of her final gag while she shoved herself to standing. There was a small square of lavender soap in a dish that she used to wash up, and it was only when she was drying her hands that she connected the smell to the bed she stayed in last night.

"Did I sleep in your _bed_?" Maka said in much shriller tones than she'd have liked as she swung open the bathroom door, ready to give Soul another black eye, but instead she nearly tripped as he fell backwards into her shins. He'd apparently been sitting on the floor against the door like an intrusive doorstop, so when Maka found her footing again she took advantage of the temporary height difference and said, bringing to bear the most severe courtroom voice she knew, "I barely know you and I slept in your bed last night. Talk."

"I told you earlier, Sir Drinks-A-Lot," Soul said as he clambered back up, scowling. "You went crazy with Blaine on stage for while, wouldn't let us bring you home, and then beat us all up. The only reason we got you here at all was because you finally cried yourself out on Anya's shoulder."

"Anya?" Maka asked, but at that moment a familiar voice said, "Hey look, the hellcat's awake!"

Blaine walked into the kitchen wearing a crimson silk bathrobe that reached mid-thigh if one were being generous, and sporting twin black eyes that made him look like he was ready for a viewing of _The Rocky Horror Picture Show._

Did _she_ do that? Her chagrin must have been apparent because he grinned and said, "You fight like a wounded bear and crowd-surf like a champ - we're officially besties now." He put his hands on his hips and started to do some side bends, apparently used to being scantily clad around strangers. "I'm Blaine. What do they call you?"

"Maka," she replied, a little dazed. "We, um. Last night's a bit of a blur."

He straightened up and slung an arm around her shoulder while Maka quickly shifted her gaze up to Soul's face so she wouldn't see anything under his bathrobe that she'd regret, but he just steered her around the kitchen to sit on a stool at the breakfast bar. "We crowd surfed for a while - nice form, by the way - and then you wanted to drink more, so we did a couple tequila shots. Then you _begged_ me to dance and the crowd was more than happy to give us some space, but _then_ you wanted to go outside. You left without me and by the time I found you, you were halfway up the side of the building yelling about showing someone you're gonna be at the top, which it seems you took very literally. Anyway, when I tried to stop you, you got mad and threw down, then Soul came and tried to talk you out of climbing the fire escape, so you punched him, and then my boyfriend Kid came thinking he could reason with you, but you can see how well that went over. Anya showed up at that point, you cried a lot, and here we are!"

"You pack quite the punch, miss." The man who had sat at the bar with Soul last night walked into the kitchen from the same room Blaine stepped out of, a purple bruise on one cheek and a small patch of blood on the corner of his nose. "I thought you'd have to be sedated."

He came to stand next to Blaine, and the sight of all three of them with their matching bruises that she was apparently responsible for made the guilt that had been creeping up on her all morning begin to spill over - except no, _they_ brought her here against her will, this was _their_ fault, she never asked to be coddled by near strangers. She was no damsel in distress, to be carted off by three knights in shining bruises.

A surge of righteous fury gave her the strength to meet each of their eyes without remorse. "I'm sure that I wouldn't have done anything that crazy, so maybe if you didn't try to force me to go anywhere -"

"Oh good, you're awake." A woman with bright blond curls bustled through the men to pull Maka into a firm hug. "You were so distressed last night - near didn't make it home with you in one piece, to say nothing of the boys."

"I'm sorry, you are?" Maka asked faintly, lowkey relieved that the woman didn't seem to bear any injuries. Another, smaller wave of nausea rippled through her after she opened her mouth, and she suddenly wanted nothing more than to be horizontal as soon as possible.

"I'm Anya," the woman said with a frown as she gave Maka a closer look. "Soul!" she snapped without taking her eyes off of Maka. "Get started on the usual hangover brunch. Blaine and Kid, go wash your faces - you look like wild animals. I'll see to your injuries once our guest is more comfortable." She grabbed Maka's arm in a steel grip and led her to the couch on the other side of the room. "I cannot believe those boys forgot their manners in front of a guest," she clucked once she made Maka lie down and closed all of the blinds. "They're a little rough around the edges, but they mean well. Most of the time."

Maka closed her eyes gratefully in the darkened room. Her head still throbbed and her guts were still upset with her, but at least now she could be free of that lancing sunlight.

"I will say that Blaine probably deserved his bruises," Anya continued, taking a seat in the nearby recliner and, by the sounds of it, fiddling with something soft in her hands. "Kid and Soul less so, but what can you do."

When Maka didn't reply, she let the silence be, the only noises the soft patter of her small movements and the sounds of a kitchen coming to life. After a time, Anya tried again. "I know we're practically strangers, but if there's anything you want to talk about, I'd listen." She waited, and this time Maka tried to organize her thoughts through the pounding pain in her head, but before she could open her mouth, Anya added, "I've known Soul a very long time. He hasn't been this concerned about a stranger in his life, so there must be something about you he thought was worth getting punched to keep safe."

That made the guilt finally hit home. The small noises of Anya's hands moving slowed as she went on, apparently unruffled by Maka's silence. "You probably don't remember much about what you were so worked up about last night, and now's probably not a good time to go digging for it. All I'll say is that if you don't have at least one friend you can trust with your true self, well, this kind of thing won't go away." Maka barely caught her last words, said almost to herself. "No one should suffer alone."

A song with a heavy banjo solo began to play, and Anya said, "Beg pardon, I have to take this. I'll be in the other room if you need me." Maka heard a rustle of skirts go by, and then she was alone.

The couch pillows were soft beneath her head. She cracked an eye open long enough to see white walls decorated with small, hand-painted rural scenery, sumptuously curtained bay windows, and a wooden coffee table with three picture frames on it. Something about the room made her feel safe, so she closed her eyes again against the pounding in her head.

Maka must have dozed off because she woke to the sound of spitting bacon and something that smelled starchy and savory; her stomach gurgled in appreciation. After a tentative self-inventory to confirm that she was no longer dying, she sat up and took a moment to let her head adjust to the altitude.

Soul was at the stove, his frowning face in profile as he deftly flipped an omelet with one hand and stirred something in a separate pan with the other. He was so intent on his cooking that when Maka came up behind him and asked, "What are you making?" he turned around so quickly that she was whacked in the face with his ponytail.

"Blaine, how many times - oh, it's you." He regarded her with something between wariness and reluctant concern, all traces of the friendliness he'd shown her at Trader Moe's gone.

"Me," she confirmed, deciding to continue as if she were as intimidating as he seemed to take her - Mama always said that the first step to winning an argument was to act as if you were right. "About last night-"

"Finally, an apology," Soul muttered, plopping the finished omelet onto a plate that he shoved into the warmed oven. "Was wondering when you were gonna get around to that."

"I came to get more information about my alleged punch," she said stiffly, back straight and mouth set. "Once I have the full story and hear from supposed witnesses, _then_ I will decide if this merits an apology." The truth was that she _had_ intended to apologize, but seeing him act so presumptuous made her change her mind.

He gave her a flat look. "Judge, jury, and executioner, huh?" he said, pouring more seasoned eggs into the pan. "You heard it from multiple people already. How's that hand feeling, by the way? You caught Kid right on the cheekbone and that's sure to leave a mark."

While she was still gaping at him - the sheer, unadulterated _impudence_ of this man - he put the spatula down, grabbed her arm, and brought her hand to eye level. Her knuckles were slightly swollen and red, and the small cuts beneath them bespoke an ill-advised backhand.

What burned was that he didn't say a word, just kept looking at her with those level crimson eyes until she yanked her arm back and glared.

"Not wanting to believe something doesn't mean it's not true," he said quietly, and turned back to the stove.

Maka took a deep breath. Well. The evidence was even clearer than it had been, but the apology still rankled as she forced it out of her mouth. "I'm sorry I punched you."

"Apology conditionally accepted," Soul said, and handed her a plate with a vegetable omelet, steaming home fries, and a dollop of what looked like homemade ketchup. "I'll still wanna know the reason for this bender at some point."

"We all want things we can't have," she said blithely, and turned to seat herself at the table. The others must be coming out soon, given the tasty smells coming from the kitchen, so she'd occupy herself here until they did. She ran a tentative hand over the large doily in the center of the table that looked like it matched the one in the bathroom, marvelling at the intricacy of the pattern.

"My mother used to make them when I was growing up," Anya said as she came down the hall near the table. "She said all proper ladies should know how to crochet and do needlepoint, among other 'ladylike' skills such as deferring to your gentleman in most matters of importance. I liked the needlework; I left the rest behind."

Voices came from the hallway at the other end of the room, and then Blaine and Kid appeared, having some sort of argument about Blaine wanting to do a cover of Kid's favorite Mahler piece for the saxophone. All of their faces looked much better, if still painful, and soon enough everyone was seated at the table with overfull plates.

"Oh, the coffee," Soul said and strode back into the kitchen to grab an old, dented French press. "Any takers?"

Kid and Anya raised their mugs, but the thought of any liquid other than water made her stomach roil, so she gently shook her head when he gave her a questioning look. The salty, savory smells wafting up from her plate reminded her she did indeed have an appetite, but her manners wouldn't let her begin until everyone was seated.

Soul poured her a glass of water from the pitcher and deposited two small pills on her plate. "For your head," he explained, and then sat down across from her.

Like a trained puppy, the moment Soul's chair was pulled in, Blaine grabbed his fork and began shoveling food into his mouth.

Maka stared at him for a moment as the full force of how absurd the last twenty-four hours were hit her. "I'm, uh. I'm sorry for all the trouble I've caused you," she said before scooping a chunk of home fries into her mouth so she wouldn't have to keep talking. Soul quirked an eyebrow at the noise she made after that first bite, and she couldn't even muster a suitable glare because _this was delicious_. She took another, more measured forkful and met his gaze because she'd be damned if she let him win this game of eye contact chicken.

"No worries bro," Blaine said, looking ridiculous with his purpled eyes and merry, spinach-stained grin. "That was the most fun I've had playing a show in _years!_ Can we keep her?" he added, batting his bruised eyelids at Anya.

"She is not a pet, Blaine Strickland, and you will not refer to her as such," Anya said with enough authority he actually had the grace to look abashed. Somewhat.

Anya shifted her gaze to Maka over the rim of a dainty china mug. "There is the problem of what led to this all happening." Her tone was full of the calm certainty that Maka would answer whatever she asked, and somehow it didn't bother her the same way Soul's gruff attitude did. "What's the last thing you remember?"

Maka's gaze flicked across the table as she realized she'd have to do this in front of everyone. Kid took a bite of omelet and sipped at his coffee, his expression one of polite interest as if she hadn't decked him a few hours prior.

"Well," Maka began, taking a sip of water to clear her throat. "I was working on a school assignment - I'm in law school - and then-" She stopped, remembering with a jolt how the walls had seemed to press in on her lungs.

"Then?" Anya prompted kindly.

"Then I went for a walk, and ended up at the bar. I didn't plan on getting drunk," she added, and winced at how petulant and defensive her voice sounded, even to her.

"No one ever does," Soul remarked as he helped himself to another mug of coffee.

Maka clenched her fist around her fork in a reflexive reaction only Blaine seemed to notice, and he just grinned even wider. "It was the first time I'd gone out drinking, and I clearly misjudged my tolerance," she said through clenched teeth before stabbing the last bite of omelet on her plate and seething at how good it tasted.

"That was your first time?" Any carefully aloof pretenses Soul had been maintaining fell away as he looked at her like she'd just announced she wanted to go streaking.

"Excellent listening skills," she retorted, ashamed enough as it was that she'd lost control so completely.

"Well, that explains a lot," Blaine said as if that settled the matter. "Got any more bacon?"

Maka felt a rush of gratitude to the strange little sax player as the conversation shifted away from her terrible life choices. She noticed Anya looking at her again with an unreadable expression, but Maka didn't care much as long as she didn't press the issue.

When everyone's plates were empty and Blaine let out an echoing belch that Anya promptly smacked him for, Maka gathered her dignity to say, "Well, I should be going now. Let me help you clean up and then I'll be on my way." She frowned, and added, "Where are we, exactly?"

"Brookline," Kid answered, standing to take his plate and mug into the kitchen.

"Oh, okay, that's not too far from me. I can find a bus," Maka said, while having no idea if that was true. She _did_ know that she couldn't bear to accept any more help from these people, however.

"Don't worry about a bus, I'll take you home." Soul stood and glanced at Anya, who tilted her head in assent at some unspoken question. "How close is 'not too far?'"

"No, really, it's fine. You've done enough for me," Maka said, gathering her dishes and bringing them to the kitchen sink so she could more quickly make a somewhat gracious exit.

"I'd feel a lot better knowing you were delivered directly to your apartment instead of wandering through Brookline," Anya said, and something in her tone made Maka realize this was a losing argument.

"I live in Cambridgeport, between the river and Central T-station," Maka said with as much politeness as she could muster being thoroughly out-voted.

"That's even better - I work in a little while, I can just drop you off before my shift." Soul put his dishes in the dishwasher and then headed back down the hallway Maka had followed him out of earlier.

Kid and Blaine helped clear the table before heading back into Blaine's room, and Anya got the dishwasher going on her way out the door. "I have a matinee to attend," she said somewhat apologetically, but stayed long enough to give Maka a hug and tell her she hoped they could meet again soon.

Soul walked back out some time later wearing a Hawaiian shirt and carrying a small backpack and two helmets, one of which he threw to Maka with a belated, "Catch."

She grabbed it from the air with a small grunt - it was heavier than it looked - and gave him a disdainful glare. What, were they riding _horses_ to her apartment?

"Aren't familiar with motorcycles, are you?" he said with the barest hint of challenge, and _oh_ , it was _on._

"Of course I am," she lied, slamming on the helmet only to realize that she put it on backwards.

"Here, let me get that for you," came Soul's voice, muffled and amused and far closer than it was before. "Up we go."

He removed the helmet and flipped it around for her while Maka's hair stood up with static. The ghost of a smile still lingered on his lips as he tightened the straps and wiggled it into position.

"We're heading out," Soul said loudly as they passed by Blaine's room, and a thunderous set of footsteps later, Blaine was launching himself at Maka to give her a back-pounding hug.

"Come back soon, all right?" he said when he released her. "Soul can be _such_ a stick in the mud."

"We'll see," Maka said with a smile, internally planning to never again set foot near any of them ever again so her shame could die quietly.

Kid had wandered out as well, so she gave him a half-hearted wave. How does one salute a new - friend? acquaintance? - to whom one had caused bodily harm? He returned her gesture with a kind, if somewhat strained smile, and then Maka was following Soul out the front door and down a small set of stairs to the curb where there was, indeed, a motorcycle.

Soul mounted it with practiced ease and took a moment to adjust his ponytail and backpack before putting on his own helmet. "Well?" he asked when she continued to stand next to him. "It's not rocket science. Get on behind me and hold onto my waist." He stopped for a moment to consider. "Or the side bars here, but they're less secure. Just pretend you're trying to get a better hold to strangle me like you were trying to do last night."

Maka stiffened at that and practically jumped on behind him. "Don't tempt me," she said, and boldly wrapped her arms around his torso; she was immediately validated when he made a gratifying grunt of surprise.

There wasn't much time for gloating after that, though, because then he opened the throttle and she _had_ to hold on, the sudden wind rejuvenating to her hungover body. They arrived at Trader Moe's some time later, at which point Soul helped her off of the motorcycle and grabbed her shoulder when her legs wobbled. He had that smug look on his face again that was swiftly wiped away when Maka said with as much sweetness as she could muster, "That was so much fun!"

And to be honest, she wasn't really exaggerating - the ride had been exhilarating with the wind in her hair, the low dips and the smooth turns. "Thanks for dropping me off," she added with more sincerity, remembering that he did try to help her out despite being on the receiving end of her martial arts training.

"No problem."

A small, awkward silence passed between them while Soul looked like he was debating whether or not to say something and Maka stared at a crack in the pavement.

"Well, I'll head home then," Maka said. "See you around, but ideally never again like last night." She was proud of herself for not blushing or looking away.

"Right." Soul scratched his neck and took out a rumpled receipt from his pants pocket. "I'm gonna give you my number on the off chance you ever find yourself in a weird situation like that again and need an out. And also so I can let you know once I manage to delete your number from Blaine's phone, because he got it from yours when you threw it at him last night in the hopes he could Google your address. He means well, but has zero boundaries." He scribbled his number on the receipt with the nub of a pencil and handed it to her.

Maka accepted it with a frown. "How did he get past my passcode?"

"Said you had one of the 'control freak' passcodes, something about a symmetrical pattern," Soul replied with a tired shrug. "You didn't have anyone listed as an emergency contact, and we didn't wanna call random people in your phone, so ultimately we went back to trying to talk you down. Which, yeah."

Maka blushed this time, wondering how long it would take to thoroughly wipe the memories of this day from her brain.

"Oh, one more thing." Soul rummaged around in his bag and drew out a small bag of dried chiles and a folded up piece of paper. "I meant to give these to you the next time I caught you at the store. Thought you might want to try a good chili recipe now that you have stir fry under your belt."

"Oh, thank you." Maka took the chiles and then sort of just stopped, unused to people she didn't know and hadn't gotten a real chance to vet being nice to her. Did this mean he really forgave her? Did he expect something in return? Was he trying to butter her up for a future favor?

"You uh, you sure you don't want me to walk you home? You look kinda like a zombie." Soul had that worried crease along his forehead and kept shifting his weight between his feet, and Maka realized she'd been staring at the bag in her hand for the last thirty seconds.

"Oh, no, I'm fine. Just tired," she said, slapping on a smile strong enough to repel anyone with her best interests in mind. "See you around."

She walked across the parking lot towards the sidewalk that led to her road, feeling Soul's eyes on her back until she passed behind the building at the foot of the plaza. It was almost strange to be by herself now, having been surrounded by people since she entered the bar last night, and Maka was still processing the fact that she had done even half of what she _remembered_ , never _mind_ what she didn't.

Her dead phone felt heavier in her pocket with each step she took, thoughts of a worried Harvar filling her with a special kind of dread. She never even stayed out late, forget just not coming home without telling him, and she hoped he'd crashed after a long stream and hadn't noticed her absence. She sighed. Well, only one way to find out. The wind blew the peppers' scent around her as she kept walking, Soul's recipe and note warm in her hand.

/

As it turned out, Harvar was _furious_. He jolted up from the kitchen table when she walked through the door and stalked over to her, bags under his eyes and a painfully distraught slant to his mouth.

"Where _were_ you? When you weren't home at midnight, I tried calling you, but you wouldn't pick up and then it started going straight to voicemail and -" He stopped once he reached her to pull her into a back-cracking hug.

"I'm sorry, _I'm sorry_ , you can let me go now," Maka said into his sternum as Harvar babbled on above her head. "I went to a bar last night and, well, things got out of hand and I stayed at...a friend's house."

"A friend's house, huh," Harvar said, anger fading to the kind of calculating menace she'd only seen him wear when someone had threatened to hit her in middle school. "Do I know her?" He paused, gauging her reaction. "Or him?" She must have given something away in her expression, because a dangerous gleam flickered through his eyes and he pointed to the couch. "Sit. I'm making tea."

Maka sighed, too residually hungover to argue. She took extra care sitting down, her sense of equilibrium still out of whack, and stared at the edge of the rug while Harvar puttered around in the kitchen. A few minutes later, he came out bearing two steaming mugs of green tea and placed them on the coffee table, one by her and the other near him where he took a seat in the bean bag chair. "So. Who's this 'friend' you stayed out all night with?"

Maka groaned. "It's not like that, Harv. I drank too much and didn't want to tell them where I lived, so they took me back to their place-"

"They? Their?" Harvar repeated, eyebrows climbing towards his hairline until Maka summoned what was left of her strength to sit up and smack him.

"I said it's _not like that_ ," she hissed, wincing when the effort made her head throb. "I made some less than optimal decisions, okay, aren't I allowed to be human?"

Harvar made an incredulous sound. "You tell me, Miss Roboto. Look, are you really okay? If he - _they_ \- did stuff to you while you were drunk, I'll make them regret it, but you know I wouldn't judge you if you had consensual-"

"I know," Maka interrupted, the cognitive dissonance of the last twenty-four hours catching up to her at last. "I need a nap, I think, and then to get back to work. I'm really sorry I worried you, I'll try not to let that happen again."

Harvar looked at her for a moment and nodded. "You do look like you tried to take on the Elite Four with a level five Pikachu. I'll be in my room if you need me, but I wanna hear more about this later." He stood up and patted her shoulder on his way out, steaming mug of green in hand.

Maka sat in the relative silence for a moment, watched the dust motes float through the afternoon sunbeams, and wondered how her usual spot on the couch could feel so wrong.

Her laptop was on the other end of the table, and her chest tightened when she thought of all the work she had left to do, all the holes she had to fill to make her mother proud. Instead, feeling something in her unravel as she did, Maka got up and headed towards her room.

As she passed Harvar's door, Anya's words came back to her with stinging clarity. _You don't have to suffer alone._ She entered her room and laid on her bed, eyes wandering once she got comfortable. The awards and medals she'd accrued over the years hung or stood in neat rows by her bookshelf, which was packed with heavily annotated copies of all the classics, all the must-reads that every well-respected Ivy League scholar had said the best and brightest should read. Her jiu jitsu trophies were on their own small stand beneath framed newspaper clippings detailing various charity fundraisers she'd helped organize, and beside those was a small picture of Maka and her mother with matching grins after Maka had won the middle school National Vocabulary Championship.

She closed her eyes. Who said she was suffering?

/

Looming midterms meant that Maka had little time to cringe about her behavior at the bar. Weeks slipped by as she dove back into her studies with a focus bordering on desperation, and with her renewed dedication came the slide back to ramen for lunch and dinner. She told herself it was just for midterms and not because she didn't want to risk running into Soul or Blaine getting fresh ingredients at Trader Moe's.

Besides, it's not like she hadn't heard from them. Well, Blaine, anyway; he had kept up a steady stream of texts with questionable syntax and odd pictures Harvar called 'memes' from the day after she'd spent the night until Maka blocked him for sending twenty texts with ridiculous emoji while she was in class. The small part of her that was amused by his antics was summarily ejected from her consciousness.

But one day in mid-November when she finally surfaced from her midterm-induced wave of productivity, she noticed that the random muscle spasms and black spots were beginning to return, as was that deep sense of exhaustion. So, with dread warring against the stubborn pride that she wasn't _scared_ , Maka went into Trader Moe's. The chance that she'd run into Soul while he was working was slim anyway, given his work responsibilities and how quickly she'd be in and out.

Her list was simple. Those chiles he gave her were still unused, and the recipe that came with them was straightforward enough that she felt it was a good compromise first meal to get back into the home cooking habit.

The produce section was quiet, and a glance down the spice aisle that was certainly not furtive was clear of any white ponytails. All that was left was the meat, and she'd be out of there.

"I'd like three pounds of boneless chuck, please," Maka told the disconcertingly buff man behind the butcher counter.

"Comin' right up!" he told her with a cheerful wink that was warm despite the somewhat menacing eyepatch, and then turned to holler over his shoulder, "Oy, Eruka, which one was the chuck again?"

A harried looking woman in an apron and a hairnet strode over, sighing. "That one, Free, now could you _please_ just read the signs instead of calling me over all the time? I'm busy."

Free got as close to pouting as a heavily muscled man could, and said, "But I can't make you laugh when you're over there. Look." He picked up two roasts that fit into the palms of his large hands and started _juggling_ them.

Eruka turned to Maka with the kind of blank look that came from desperately seeking a happy place and said, "I'm sorry, he's just like this. I'll get you your order in a moment."

As she went back to lecturing the still-juggling Free about customer service, a voice behind Maka rumbled, "Finally making that chili?"

She should have known it was too good to be true. Maka turned around to see Soul with his hands on the handles of a small metal dolly overflowing with flowers and small potted plants. "Yes, I am," she said, a litany of ways she could end this conversation bouncing around her head, but the meat associates were still arguing and she couldn't very well leave without the centerpiece of her recipe.

"So, you've been - how _have_ you been?" Soul asked with a small stutter that he tried to hide behind a discreet cough.

"Fine, busy, the usual," Maka said, tapping her free hand against the display case glass. It was suddenly unbearable to talk to him with that annoying acceptance in his eyes at her clear non-answer, like he _trusted_ her despite everything she'd done.

"That's good. Haven't seen you at any of Blaine's shows, so I'm still in one piece. Er, I mean," he said with wide eyes as he realized how that sounded, "what happened at the show was whatever, I healed up in a week or so and nothing got infected - ugh, look, here." He reached into a hidden pocket in the cold storage jacket he was wearing over his Hawaiian shirt and drew out a sealed goldenrod envelope with her name on it in looping maroon ink. "Anya has been dogging me to give this to you for weeks after her own investigations about where you might live failed, I've taken it to work with me every day for a month hoping to catch you."

"What is it?" Maka asked, taking it from him; it was heavier than she expected.

"An invitation. To our annual Friendsgiving." Soul looked away and shrugged. "Said you looked like you could use some time with good people."

"Got your meat, miss." Free beamed and handed her a perfectly wrapped butcher paper packet while Eruka carried the juggled roasts back to their display cases with a little smile on her face.

"Thank you," she said and put the package into her handbasket. Soul was still hovering when she turned back around, clearly expecting some kind of answer, so Maka put on a polite smile and said, "Tell her thank you for the invitation, but finals are right after the break and I really need to get ahead."

This seemed to surprise Soul, who opened his mouth and then shut it again. "Oh, okay then. Maybe just, take a look at the invite anyway? Anya gets really into these things and I'm sure she'd like to know you got to see her handiwork."

A wave of shame engulfed her as she remembered how much trouble she had caused their apartment and how kind Anya had been to her regardless. "Yes, of course. Tell her," Maka paused, swallowed, "tell her I really do appreciate it."

Soul nodded, still searching her face for - something. Sincerity? Guilt? It was unnerving how he looked at her like she had already proven herself worthy, like she didn't need to earn his regard; she fought the urge to fidget. "I'll tell her. Hope you like the chili." He gave her a small smile and went back to pushing his laden dolly towards the flower section.

Maka tucked Anya's letter into her jacket and headed to the checkout. The weight of it seemed to grow with every step she took, though, and by the time she got home it was all she could do to put her groceries away before carefully opening the heavy parchment envelope with an exacto knife.

The card was beautiful. Rich maroon cardstock provided the backdrop to a beautiful maple leaf motif with gold-embossed ivy vines. Inside, written in the same narrow, looping hand as Maka's name on the envelope, were the words:

 _Dear Maka,_

 _All of us here would like to extend a heartfelt invitation to our Thanksgiving meal. There will be good food, good booze, and most importantly, good company. Please RSVP by the 24th so we know whether to set an extra place._

 _We hope you can make it._

 _Kind regards,_

 _Anya_

 _Blaine (devilish imp emoji)_

 _Soul_

 _Kid_

Maka tried and failed to repress a smile at Blaine's spelled-out emoji, and snorted at how curly Soul's handwriting was.

She pulled out her phone and poked the home button, noting from the date that she had a week to make her decision. It had never been a problem to turn down social invitations before, but something about this one tugged at the lonely, needy part of herself she spent the better part of her life pretending didn't exist.

Her mother had sacrificed so many nights at home in order to do the work that set the stage for her illustrious career, missed out on so much of Maka's life for the sake of providing her food and clothes and a warm roof over her head. Maka put the invitation back in the envelope. Mama had told her it'd be hard, had warned her about the dangers of becoming attached to people who were not important to her goals. Maka was prepared for this.

Right?

Her pen rested on a blank sheet of her nicest notebook paper for a long time while she tried to make the gracious refusal that simmered in her mind appear on paper. After another few minutes spent staring at 'Dear Anya, Blaine, Soul, and Kid,' Maka made a frustrated noise and shoved the paper away. There was still time; she'd do it later.

But the next six days fell away with her reply untouched on the coffee table. There were no more excuses; she was officially on Thanksgiving break and had taken out her frustration about not being able to answer Anya's invitation on beginning all of her final papers, so she was ahead on all of her assignments. There was still the issue of her mother's impending job interview, a topic that made breathing difficult when she thought about it too long, but technically, there was no reason she couldn't go. Harvar had gone to spend the holiday weekend with Kilik's family in New York City, so Maka had the place to herself and the quiet was starting to make her twitchy.

This shouldn't be such a problem. Maka ground her teeth and got up to pace, trying to wrangle the guilt at having waited so long to reply into productive energy. But the more she leaned towards going, the more her mother's disappointment loomed in her mind and sent her careening into a frenzied need to prove herself.

Well, this wasn't going anywhere. Maka shoved away the seething mass of inadequacy that surfaced whenever she thought about her mother, grabbed her coat and wallet, and headed out the door. Fate would decide her Thanksgiving plans: if she ran into Soul at the store, she'd say she'd join them for their meal, and if she didn't, at least she'd be able to get ingredients to make herself something nice.

It was, predictably, a madhouse. Last-minute shoppers clashed with rabid type-A cooks who had been thrown off kilter by surprise gluten allergies, and Maka witnessed a fight almost break out over the last can of pumpkin.

Every scrap of white made her heart race; first a button-down shirt, then a scarf, then someone with platinum blonde hair. But as she slowly made her way through the aisles, there was not a trace of Soul, and her steps became heavier as she realized he must not be working.

She stopped in front of the herb display, trying to compartmentalize her feelings so they could stop getting in the way of everything she had to do. This was an equally okay outcome, and she _had_ said she'd let fate decide. So why did her heart hurt?

No. Maka clamped down on her silly disappointment and strode to the checkout, basket full of the few items she'd grabbed when she wasn't scanning the crowd for Soul. It was foolish to mourn something she hadn't committed to and knew she shouldn't waste time on; now she'd have time to prepare for that upcoming phone call with her mother, because there were so many things she had left to do, so many weaknesses she had to shore up before her mother clinically dissected them and found her wanting-

"Ma'am, that'll be $28.50." The young cashier gave her a polite, tired smile, and glanced at the growing line behind her.

"Of course, sorry about that," Maka said, and inserted her debit card into the chip reader. Her lapses in focus were bleeding into everyday life now; maybe it _was_ too late for her. Maybe she should have chosen a different career path, one where she could enjoy herself like Blaine or collect the kind of wisdom that helped other people, like Soul and his cooking tips.

Maka stopped where she stood outside of Trader Moe's, the hand gripping her grocery bags squeezing tighter and tighter as she fought this upswell of forbidden emotion. Law school had been The Plan for as long as she could remember: go to school, get the best grades, follow in Mama's footsteps, prove to the world - what? That she could do it, too? That she could overcome an absent father and demanding mother and still, after everything, make them proud?

What did she owe them?

The world became muffled and distant while Maka took measured steps towards her apartment and pulled out her phone. Through the roaring static, she thumbed into her blocked contacts, removed Blaine from the list, and sent him a simple _[[Please tell Anya I'd be delighted to attend dinner tomorrow]]_

She exhaled. The moment she'd sent that text, the static stopped, the mental wind died down, and in the silence it felt like she could almost be happy. But her mind caught up to her too quickly, spitting the kind of cutting vitriol one could only conjure oneself - _you'll never make a real difference; good luck being a failure for the rest of your life; who will want you now? -_ and she spent the rest of the walk home letting the freezing wind dry her tears.


	4. 4

**4: I might be wrong**

Soul thought that, on the whole, he was a good man. Sure, he was prone to brooding, and sometimes he said things in anger that he didn't mean, but overall, he was _trying,_ and that counted for something, right?

So when he walked out of his room on Thanksgiving morning to see Blaine in the kitchen, shirtless and in a frilly apron that said "Kiss the cook" with the second 'o' turned into a 'c' through some distressingly competent needlework, he wondered what on Earth he had done to deserve this.

"Morning, stud muffin," Blaine said, flipping a giant pancake in the frying pan on the stove. "Ready to feed the starving masses?"

"I will be once I get my kitchen back," Soul answered, pulling his hair back into a small bun and cracking his neck. "What are you doing up so early, anyway?"

"Gains don't wait on holidays," Blaine said, sliding his pancake onto a plate that barely contained it. "If I don't get my protein pancake, it just won't be a good day, ya dig? And since we're having my girl Maka over for dinner, I wanna make sure it's a good day."

Soul frowned and slid past Blaine to wash his hands and grab his French press from the drying rack. "I wonder why she accepted so last minute. She was so...distant, at the store."

Blaine shrugged and continued slathering his pancake in butter and some sugar-free syrup that made Soul's New England sensibilities shudder. "Who cares, she's coming. I wanna get her thoughts on my outfit for my next show; she seems like the type of chick to appreciate black lights."

"Whatever you say," Soul said from his new position near the hot water boiler and the small drawer where they kept pencils and scraps of paper. His list was as good as it was going to get, but he still tucked the nubby pencil he'd grabbed behind his ear in case Anya had any last-minute suggestions. "What time is she showing up, anyway?"

"Dunno," Blaine said around a mouthful of pancake. "I told her you guys said we plan to eat around three and that she should come earlier because I wanted to show her something. Kid will come by around noon, I think. He had to do some weird manners dance with his dad or something." He shrugged, then turned to grab the quart of milk in the fridge. "You won't need this one, right?"

Soul glanced up from assembling his mis en place for the turkey and its herb butter. "No, but leave the whole milk alone unless you don't want mashed potatoes."

"Okay chief," Blaine said, and took a swig. "I'll get the living room presentable. D'you wanna wear my apron-"

"No," Soul replied automatically, already beginning to mince an entire head of garlic. "And I'm all set with your slippers, too."

"Your loss, man," Blaine said, and wiggled his gator-slippered feet. "Let me know if you need help opening jars or whatever."

"Will do." Soul's mind was already far and away on all of the timing calculations that were central to any good cook's decision making, and the more intuitive sensing of how much extra spice or oil or herbs something needed. It was easy to lose himself here, in the ordered chaos of preparing food. There was always something to think about, an internal timer or three to keep track of, and at the end of it all there were smiles and appreciation and the small sense that he had contributed to someone's life, if only for one meal.

And so the morning went, with Soul chopping and whisking and stirring, while Blaine put on a playlist of mashups that somehow didn't make Soul want to gouge someone's eyes out. Anya came out a little after Soul had gotten the turkey in the oven to take over roll-making duties and shoo Blaine out to give the living room a _real_ cleaning.

There was a knock on the door at noon, but it was just Kid, and Soul was somewhat annoyed with himself for how his heart jumped in his chest at the sound. Maka had made it pretty clear she wasn't very keen on him, and that was fine - he sure had no energy to spare on that small, angry blade of a woman - but there was nonetheless something that tugged at him about her and wouldn't let him go. He ground his pestle into the salt and garlic and herbs in the mortar more firmly than he had to. Maybe when he saw her again, his stupid subconscious could let it go.

Then the doorbell rang.

"I'll get it," Soul said, glancing at Anya up to her elbows peeling potatoes and Blaine in the middle of using the sofa to do squats while Kid arranged coasters into a more aesthetically pleasing pattern on the coffee table. It'd be fine. He'd be cool, say hi, and welcome her graciously into their home like the impeccable host he was. He even grinned wide on his walk to the door to stretch the underused muscles of his face and put on what was hopefully a friendly smile as he pulled the door open, warm greeting on the tip of his tongue.

The words died on his lips.

"Hey, Soul. Happy Thanksgiving." Wes gave him an uncertain smile and proffered a bottle of - god, it was a 2007 Sassicaia, this was worth more than two hundred dollars. "I remember you liked reds, I wasn't sure what you might have had on hand so I went for something a little more special."

Soul stared at his brother, impeccably dressed as always in a tailored Armani suit. "What are you doing here?" he asked, not budging, not letting his brother taint one inch of his new life no matter what expensive gifts he offered.

"I'm here to see you." Wes's smile disappeared as he met Soul's stony gaze. "It's been almost five years, you won't answer my calls -"

"I don't have to answer anyone I don't want to," Soul interrupted, gripping the doorknob he still held in one hand. "I didn't ask to be tracked down, I just want to be left alone. Tell that to Mom and Dad when you report back." He was about to close the door in his meddling brother's face when he saw Maka walking on the sidewalk a few houses down. "Fuck," he muttered as their eyes met and she lifted a tentative hand in greeting.

Wes turned to follow his gaze and asked, with some of his old nosiness bleeding through his attempt at respecting Soul's boundaries, "Who's this?"

"Hi, Maka," Soul said around him as she began to climb the stairs. "Glad to see you made it over here all right."

"Yes, well, busses aren't so bad when you're prepared for them to be fifteen minutes late all the time." She glanced at Wes. "I'm sorry, I don't believe we've met."

"Ah, yes, unlikely. I'm visiting from out of town. I'm -" He paused, and looked at Soul.

Well, there was no use trying to hide anything now, given the way Maka's shrewd eyes flitted between them with growing understanding. "This is my brother, Wes. I wasn't sure if he'd make it."

Maka was still looking between them, and Soul fought the urge to dig his nails into his palm, because here it came, the inevitable comparison where Soul always came out wanting.

"Well, it's no Hawaiian, but you two sure like your button-downs, don't you?" she said with a small smile, and something loosened in his chest. "I didn't know what to bring, so I hope this will do." She held up a small wine-shaped bag. "It's a white, but I don't know too much about wine, so I can't speak for its quality."

"Thank you," Soul said, and stepped back into the apartment. "Come on in." He gave his brother a cool glance before leading them back to where preparations were still going strong.

Blaine was the first to notice their visitors. "Hey Maka - oh, hey Wes. Long time no see."

At Wes's name, Anya whirled around, ladle in hand and golden curls piled on her head in a pineapple bun. "Weston Rhys Evans," she said, a dangerous glint in her eyes. "To what do we owe the pleasure?"

Wes swallowed and glanced at Soul. "I've been trying to get in touch with Soul for a while, but he uh, I couldn't reach him. I figured I'd stop by in person since this is the time to celebrate the things we're thankful for." He turned earnest eyes to Soul. "I've really missed you."

He didn't want this to be happening here, now, in front of so many people. "I've missed you, too. Glad you're here." As soon as the lie was out of his mouth, Anya fixed him with a carefully neutral expression, and he knew he'd be getting an earful later. What he didn't expect, though, was Maka's thoughtfulness as she looked between them again, something like sympathy in her eyes.

He'd have to be more careful with all of these perceptive people around.

"Right, so, beer pong teams," Blaine said, vaulting over the couch to join them by the breakfast bar. Or maybe not.

"This is a holiday, not a frat party. No beer pong," Anya said in conversational tones, because this was something they had to hash out every time they had more than two guests. "Maybe try a board game instead."

"More like an 'I'm bored' game," Blaine grumbled, but his expression softened when he looked at Kid's growing smile.

"May we play Balderdash?" he asked, a quickly stifled glimmer of competitive spirit breaking through his usually stoic expression.

"D'awh, I can't say no to that face. But oh, aren't we expecting-"

A thunderous knock at the door interrupted him. "Speak of the devil!" he cried while he jogged to the door and flung it wide. "There are my farm-fresh ladies!"

"Happy Friendsgiving!" Patty sang, shouldering her way past Liz and Tsubaki to plop a few bottles of liquor on the counter. "I'll make you whatever you want after you try what I make for you first." She noticed Maka hovering by the couch and clapped her hands. "Oh hey! You'll try my drinks, right? Sissy, this is who I was tellin' you about." Patty tugged on Liz's red flannel sleeve until she turned away from giving Anya a bear hug that lifted her clear off her feet.

"Patty, what - oh, hello there." Liz lowered Anya, beaming, back to the ground and swept back her thick mass of dirty-blonde hair. "Haven't seen you 'round here before. I'm Liz." She pursed her lips, artfully covered in a dark red lipstick that matched her flannel. "You're tiny to have my sister get you drunk. Hope your liver's okay."

Maka smiled and gave a rueful half-shrug. "I could have made better decisions that night. I'm Maka, by the way."

"Well, it's nice to meet you, Maka." Liz turned her gunmetal gaze to Wes next, cocking her head and giving him the same look Soul had seen her use to appraise cattle. "You never mentioned you had a brother, Soul, way to hold out on us."

Wes still had on that brittle smile, and as much as a small part of Soul relished his discomfort, he didn't want to make a scene in front of his friends. So he put on his best 'everything is fine' smile and said, "Yeah, never thought to mention it. He travels a lot, and I knew you'd wanna meet him if I talked about him too much."

"Damn right we would." Liz walked over and stuck a hand out to Wes. "Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you, ah, too," Wes said, wincing at her grip. Soul smothered a smile; Liz always had his back.

"Where would you like these?" Tsubaki asked, hefting a bundle of flowers that she had clearly cut just before coming.

"Here, I'll get you a vase." Anya bustled away to a hall closet and came back with simple ceramic vase that she filled with a few inches of water. "Thank you so much, they really bring so much life to the table."

"It was my pleasure," Tsubaki said, a small dimple appearing when she smiled.

"Tsu baby, didja bring the meat?" Blaine wandered over and gave her a chaste hug after getting a death glare from Liz, who had just finished admiring Kid's gauges.

"I sent over the turkey yesterday and brought some rashers of bacon for brunch tomorrow, if that's what you mean."

Blaine whooped and slung an arm around Kid's shoulders, whisper-yelling, "These guys grow the best damn pigs this side of the Mississippi."

Kid nodded and thanked them for the meat, and then made the singular mistake of asking Blaine for a glass of wine. Blaine's eyes lit up and he dashed into his room, only to run back out with an electric drill and some pliers a few moments later. He grabbed one of the bottles on the counter, said, "Hah, this one says Sass on it," and wedged it between his knees. Kid, at this point looking as though he were in need of several calming breaths, said, "Blaine, what are you doing?"

"Trust me, babe," he said, lining up the drill bit on the cork with a nail he produced from his pocket. "I saw this on the Internet."

Anya happened to look over from her conversation with Tsubaki right when Blaine pulled the trigger, and Soul almost would have pitied him had he not also agreed with the murderous shock on Anya's face at this blasphemous treatment of such an expensive bottle of wine.

The nail was in, though, and then Blaine clamped on the pliers and twisted to remove the cork. It made a small pop that Patty cheered, and Blaine somehow managed to swagger more than usual as he poured a glass. Kid did get his wine, at least, and even looked happy about it. But Anya strode over with a menacing, " _Blaine Ulysses Strickland"_ that devolved into a lecture about proper uncorking procedure, to which he didn't seem to be playing the slightest bit of attention.

Soul took the moment to sidle closer to Maka, who was looking more and more overwhelmed. "Sorry about not giving you a better heads up about who'd be here," he said, glancing over at his friends while everyone but Anya moved into the living room. "We knew some people would come, but that still doesn't mean you know what they'll _do,_ you know?"

She nodded, then looked at him from the corner of her eye. "Not on great terms with your brother?"

Soul blanched. "No, we're fine, I just wasn't expecting him, is all."

Maka looked at him with those peculiar green eyes - the color of his favorite piece of seaglass, now that he thought about it - and made a noncommittal noise in the back of her throat. "You don't have to talk about it." She looked away, and Soul couldn't place the expression on her face. "Family stuff is complicated."

Something about her tone made him want to follow that comment, but he couldn't because Anya called him over to help with something in the kitchen. "Catch you in a bit, all right?" he told her, signaling to Anya that he was coming. "Everyone's super nice, so go on and make some friends."

"Sure thing, mom," he heard her mutter, and he smiled.

It turned out that Anya needed help with the cheese platter, and while Soul finished slicing cured meats and plating some pickled vegetables, Kid got everyone under control enough to begin explaining the rules to Balderdash.

"So, your brother." Anya gave him a sidelong look, whipping mashed potatoes next to him while he moved on to cutting herbs for the salad dressing. "When was the last time you spoke to him?"

"Years. Not since, well, not since that night I almost...not since you helped me out."

She nodded slowly, the seriousness of her expression at odds with the peals of laughter beginning to come from the other side of the room. "And your parents?"

Soul snorted. "Haven't spoken to them since they tried to force me on meds and send me off to one of their little condos somewhere. Why?"

"Well." Anya scooped the mashed potatoes into a serving dish and went to grab a handful of the chives Soul had chopped. "It might be a good idea to at least talk to him a little bit. He must have missed you."

"Bullshit," Soul spat, leaving a nick in the cutting board with the force of his last chop. "If he cared about me at all, he wouldn't have sided with my parents about what they thought I needed. I was over eighteen, they had no legal power over me, but they tried to pull that fucking tuition bullshit on me. You know this," he added, hurt that she'd sympathize with them, after so many nights spent pouring his heart out to her.

"I'm on your side," she said, turning sharp cobalt eyes to him. "But you can't leave them hanging like this for so long. You don't have to like it or agree with it, but please, at least hear him out."

Soul looked out over the breakfast bar at the festivities in the living room, at how Wes was smiling and laughing along with the rest of them, and took a breath. "Fine, I'll listen. Can't promise more than that."

Anya smiled and patted him on the shoulder. "That's all I ask."

Soul glanced at Wes, absorbed in that word game Kid had orchestrated, and fought back the wave of painful nostalgia. Wes had always enjoyed board games, and there had been a time Soul did, too.

He noticed the wine, liquor, and Blaine's homebrew on the counter nearby, organized in color order by Patty, and made the adult decision to start with wine. He'd keep his promise to Anya, but he needed to wait for the right moment to talk to Wes and a little liquid fuck-it couldn't hurt.

He was soon pulled back into the kitchen to help with the stuffing - "In my kitchen we call it a dressing, Soul" - and other miscellaneous finishing touches while the rest of the group played Balderdash and dealt with Blaine's general inappropriateness. Then it was time to carve the turkey, which was its own special kind of madness. Blaine wanted to do it, Soul brought up that time he'd turned pork chops into pulled pork, and the arguing got to such a pitch that Tsubaki finally evicted them from the kitchen and carved the bird herself. Then they were able to take their seats around the table, and, to Soul's horror, he discovered he'd been placed between Maka and his brother. There wasn't much time to gripe about it, though, because Anya had on her speech-giving face and he knew better than to interrupt.

"It's time for our annual Giving of Thanks," Anya said from her position at the head of the table. "I'll start us off: I'm thankful for dry reds, pencil skirts, and well-made car jacks. Does anyone want to add anything?"

Blaine raised his hand, and Anya asked again, with a little more affected cheer, "Anyone else?" At the collective silence, she dipped her head and sat down, face already strained.

"I'm thankful for finally scoring the man of my dreams," he said, squeezing Kid's hand and being rewarded with a warm smile in return. "And for my massive gains, and cowboy hats, and finally meeting someone who can appreciate my music the way it's meant to be appreciated." He winked at Maka, who gave him a small smile.

"Thank you for that surprisingly chaste addition," Anya said. "Anyone else?"

"I'm thankful for family," Wes said, standing to speak just like Father taught them. "And for the forgiveness that lies in all of our hearts."

Soul met Wes's gaze and fought the urge to roll his eyes. If Wes had cared so much about family, he would have never sided with their parents and tried to force Soul to be farther from theirs.

"To forgiveness," Anya intoned, and they all raised their glasses, though Soul did snort a bit under his breath first.

Dishes were passed around the table, turkey and mashed potatoes and all of the Thanksgiving classics, and, for a little while, everyone ate and made harmless small talk. Soul could hear his brother's conversation with Anya start to come to a close, though, and took action by turning his body away from his brother. "So, Maka, tell me more about that, uh, school thing."

She gave him an impressive side-eye as she chewed a small bite of stuffing, the one eyebrow in her profile arching towards her hairline. "What school thing?"

"Would you like some more mashed potatoes?" Wes cut in from Soul's right, the small set to his jaw indicating that he was hoping to engage in conversation after passing it.

"No thank you. Perhaps Kid would like some," he said, scanning the table for likely people he could pawn his brother off on.

"I'd like some," Maka said from his other side, and _no_ , there went his chance to get Wes stuck in polite conversation with someone else.

"So, Maka was it? What do you do for a living?" Wes asked while peeking around Soul, who had just drained and refilled his wine glass because he was going to need a whole lot of fuck-it the way this night was going.

"Oh, I'm a student," she said, but Soul didn't miss the small pause in her words, nor the way her smile took on that fake cast he knew too well. "I have just one more semester and then it's time for me to get a job and start making a difference." She faltered at the end of her statement and covered it by taking a drink of her own.

Wes's eyes lit up at the mention of her student status, and ugh, here it came, more gross overuse of their family's influence to win friends. "Oh, what are you studying?"

"Law," Maka replied after swallowing a bite of turkey and making a small, unintended appreciative sound that made Soul want to preen, just a little.

"Oh, well, if you need any help finding work after you graduate, I know a few firms who may be interested." Wes smiled at her with those perfectly white teeth, and there it was, that slimy, cheap way his family had always bought friends by dangling their influence in front of them until they were too grateful to bow out.

Except instead of the response Soul expected, in which she'd gasp in delight or fawn over his offer, Maka just set her cutlery down and turned that polite mask to his brother. "Thank you for the offer, but I am currently in the process of applying for a position. If all goes well, I'll be employed by graduation." She took a healthy sip of her wine after speaking, and the tightness in her eyes belied the brightness of her tone.

Wes's smile faltered somewhat, but he mustered the cheer for, "I'm happy to hear you're already on your way to a job."

Soul was wondering what else Wes had up his sleeve when Maka changed the subject. "So what do you do, Wes? Soul mentioned something about how you're not from around here?" She took another sip while she looked between them, green eyes over-bright.

"I work for a design company," Wes said, pushing some of his stuffing around. "We do primarily interior work, but also some digital and website design."

Her eyes tightened up just a bit. "Oh, I didn't realize a designer would have such close ties to a law firm. You have some picky customers, then?"

Fuck, she really was sharp. "How did the turkey come out?" Soul interrupted in the hopes of changing the subject before Maka found out he was related to assholes.

"Baller as always!" Blaine said from across the table where he was trying, and failing, to feed Kid a spoonful of mashed potatoes.

"Yes, it's quite good," Maka said, a bit grudgingly, and took another bite. Her eyes were still trained on Wes, though, who chose that moment to say, "Just like Grandma used to make," pitched low so that only Soul and maybe Maka could hear, and - what the _fuck_ , why did he have to bring her into this, why couldn't Wes just leave him on the side of the road like his parents did?

"Agreed, good shit - er, stuff, man," Liz said, casting a guilty glance at Tsu. "You did little Bethany proud."

"I didn't need to know her _name_ ," Blaine said, uncharacteristically aghast, a forkful of turkey frozen midway to his mouth. "How can I eat her if I know her _name_?"

"You know _my_ name, don't you?" Kid asked, wine glass at a jaunty angle in one hand and cheeks flushed from the bottle he and Liz had finished before dinner.

Before Blaine could collect himself enough for an inappropriate reply, Anya said, "So, Tsu, Liz, tell me more about how the farm fared this year. I heard you got some goats?"

"Yes!" Tsubaki smiled and rested her hand atop Liz's on the table. "They help keep some of the invasive weeds in check, and they're so _cute_ in that mischievous kind of way. Oh, and we finally built a second greenhouse after all those years we didn't know if we'd be able to afford it." Her smile broadened. "We got more done this year than I had hoped."

Liz flipped her palm up and gave Tsubaki's hand a squeeze. "It was all because you're so great at keeping things alive."

This made Tsubaki blush a deep pink and shake her head. "Your work on the front end with all that social media business really brought in more customers, and if you hadn't gotten us onto that digital backend system I don't know _what_ we would have done-"

Liz interrupted her with a laugh and a kiss on the cheek. "Yeah, I guess we do make a pretty kickass team."

" _Gaaaaaaaaay,_ " Blaine said, halfway into Kid's lap and generally disrupting what little decorum was left.

"Let's retire to the couches, then, if everyone's finished," Anya said, still trying to bring Blaine to heel through the sheer murderous intent in her glare.

"I'll join you there in one minute," Soul said, seeing his opportunity to get a moment of peace and quiet to compose his thoughts before talking to his brother. "I just want to make myself a new drink real fast and put away some of these leftovers."

"Oh, let me help with that," Wes said, already standing up.

"No no, it's fine, I got it," Soul replied while trying to think of a good excuse about why his brother shouldn't come into the kitchen.

"I insist." Wes had that polite edge to his voice, the one he'd break out at dinner parties and balls and galas, and there was nothing Soul could think of to deny him, so he gritted his teeth and said, "Fine." Maka was looking at them with that restrained curiosity, and maybe - "Maka, would you like to come too? I could teach you about what you can make with these kinds of leftovers."

She looked confused for a moment, but nodded and followed them into the kitchen regardless. Wes wiped the disappointment off his face with annoying speed, and helped himself to their tupperware cabinet to begin putting away the sides.

Maka glanced at Soul expectantly, so he held up his empty glass in a gesture of 'one moment please' and helped himself to a gin and tonic from the liquor and mixers lining the breakfast bar. "Would you like anything?" he asked her, more out of politeness than any real desire to make her a drink - that right hook was still a little too fresh in his memory.

She looked at the row of bottles and wrinkled her nose. "Thanks, but I'm still working on my first glass of wine. I'll be fine with that for a while; I don't want to make ending up here drunk a habit." Her eyes widened when she seemed to remember Wes was there, as he slowed down his leftover packaging to peek back at them, and Soul would never have thought it possible but she _blushed_ and began to tap her feet. "So, what did you want to show me?"

Soul took a sip of his drink, dribbling a little down his chin; Mind Anya said that he should probably slow down. Instead, he took another sip and said, "Let's start with basic food safety. You wanna get leftovers down to forty degrees or below-"

"Within four hours, or refrigerated no longer than two hours after being cooked, yes, yes." Maka raised an eyebrow at his surprised look. "What? I've done my research. Basic food safety is important."

"Right," Soul said, casting about for something else to teach her. "Do you know how to make stock from leftover bones?"

At this she blinked, so with a relieved smile Soul began to explain the process of simmering the bones with vegetable scraps and spices, and kept Wes's form in the corner of his eye at all times so as not to let him edge his way into the conversation.

After most of the leftovers were packed away and Maka had a healthy understanding of soup stock basics, Anya came in to nudge them out into the living room while she finished up. Her meaningful glance at Soul was not lost on him, but as he took a seat on the floor opposite the two couches, he figured he still had time. It'd be weird to disappear again so soon; might as well enjoy everyone's company.

Blaine was lying supine in Kid's lap, speaking to Liz with his head hanging upside down over the armrest, while Kid seemed to be engaged in a lively conversation with Tsubaki involving crop insurance subsidies. Patty was on the living room side of the breakfast bar showing Anya her latest arm knitting project, and was up to her elbows in yarn as thick as his fingers.

Wes and Maka had come to stand with him by the coffee table, but it was Wes who leaned in to say, "May I talk to you in private about-"

He was cut off by Blaine, who had sat up and realized that they were now in the room. "'Bout time y'all got in here! I wanted to show you something," he said, clambering over Kid far more than strictly necessary to come to standing. "I need some con-crit on the outfit for my next show, which, by the way, I hope to see y'all at. Hang tight, I gotta change." He scurried over to his room and shut the door wearing the kind of grin Soul had come to associate with streaking or property damage.

So with a chagrined sigh, Soul shoved his hands in his dress pants pockets and said, "After whatever this is, sure," to his brother, who now at least looked curious in addition to single-mindedly determined. Soul remembered his drink, left on the counter in the kitchen, and got up to retrieve it, adding a shot of vodka because he had a feeling he was going to need it.

"Remember, you promised to let me make you a drink tonight!" Patty called from her position leaning over the countertop separating the kitchen and living room, now entangled with Anya under the mass of yarn.

"I remember," Soul told her, looking around for Maka to make sure she hadn't decided to leave, or worse, talk to Wes about anything, but then -

"Okay, so, I have a couple options here," Blaine said, walking shirtless out of his room, carrying a few black t-shirts and - oh, _no_. "This stuff's blacklight sensitive, so I'm gonna need to set the mood."

Maka looked at the _thing_ in his other hand and said, "What the _hell_ is -"

"Ah ah ah, kind lady, your patience will be rewarded." Blaine gave her a knowing grin and sauntered over to the overhead light switch and the open section of wall where he could mount the monstrosity at which Maka and the rest of them couldn't stop staring. "Option A," he said, slipping on what appeared to be a regular black t-shirt.

The moment he shrugged the shirt fully on, he killed the lights and smacked the ass of the _butt lamp_ he had just attached to the wall, its silicone flesh jiggling slightly from the force of his whack. It did indeed produce a black light, and in the glow from those pert ass cheeks the words, "Do I Make You Horny?" were illuminated on the chest of Blaine's shirt.

There was a slight pause, a collective moment of _what the fuck,_ before Patty burst out laughing and Kid held out his freshly-emptied glass to Liz for a refill. Maka was looking between the butt lamp on the wall and Blaine with a bemused and slightly wary expression. "Well, what's the other option?"

"Okay, Option B," Blaine continued, whipping off the first shirt and replacing it with a tank top that would better be described as a second skin. He gave the butt lamp a sensual caress while he turned left and right to show off the ab lines that were accentuated by the black light paint. There were also small, crudely drawn stars on each pec that stood out far too much, in Soul's opinion. "Gotta match the tats, ya dig?" Blaine said, flexing his biceps to bring the star tattoos on each arm into disturbing relief. "So, favorites? Which one should I wear?"

"Is neither an option?" Anya asked, when he had turned the lights back on and slapped the silicone ass one more time to shut the lamp off. She and Maka made eye contact as he took it off of the wall, and from Soul's vantage they seemed to come to some unspoken understanding.

"I mean, I guess I _could_ go shirtless," Blaine mused, ducking back into his room to put that godforsaken lamp away and change back into the nice button down shirt that Kid had doubtless had to coerce him into. "Maks - is it okay if I call you that? - what do you think? T-shirt is better for potential crowd surfing, but, c'mon, I look _fine_ in that tank."

Instead of answering him, Maka turned to Patty and said, "I think I'll take you up on that drink now."

Soul, deciding this was an excellent idea, finished the rest of his old drink in one large swallow and rasped, "Me too, while you're at it."

"Two Thanksgiving Supremes, comin' right up!" Patty said as she danced her way over to the impromptu kitchen bar.

Blaine said, "Get back to me!" and proceeded to try to get Kid to sit on his lap.

"We may regret this," Soul muttered, noting with no small amount of dread the wicked grin on Patty's face as she measured out various alcohols.

"Speak for yourself," Maka said, eyeing the empty glass in his hand. "Something bothering you?"

Soul glanced at Wes, who was speaking to Anya and looking highly uncomfortable. "Nah, it's nothing. Just in the mood to loosen up a little after cooking all day."

She shrugged and surveyed the room. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to. Your brother seems nice, by the way."

"Yeah." Soul looked back at him, shirt crisp and hair in the short style their father had always favored, and clenched his fist. "He's perfect." It was impossible to keep all of the bitter scorn out of his voice, though, and Maka looked on the verge of posing another personal question when Patty floated over with two margarita glasses rimmed with what Soul hoped was sugar given the virulent color of the liquid inside.

"Drink up, friends!" she chirped, and stayed just long enough to clink their glasses together in a little toast before wandering back to talk to her sister.

Soul gave the bright green mixture a tentative sniff and looked at Maka, who lifted her shoulder in a small 'after you' gesture, so Soul took a sip. He coughed a few times, the cloying sweetness of Midori much too strong for his tastes, but he took another, and another. "'S good," he wheezed, trying very hard to ignore the twin burn of scotch and ginger beer in the back of his throat.

Maka had on an understandably dubious expression, but was saved from having to actually taste it because Wes came back, looking like he survived his conversation with Anya better than Soul would have hoped. "Might I steal you for a moment, Soul?"

Soul nodded and finished his drink, placing the empty glass on the coffee table and brushing past his brother with the intent to lead him back to his room where it was quieter. However, he ended up half-falling into his brother because holy _shit_ , he was drunk.

"Soul?" Wes looked concerned, and no, _no,_ he would _not_ pull the caring older brother routine on him he would _not_ -!

"I'm fine, this way please," Soul said, drawing on reserves long underused to be politeness incarnate, all of those stupid etiquette classes rushing back to him like he was still dancing on his parents' strings.

He led his brother to his room, where he could at least have the home turf advantage, and tried to focus on walking like his equilibrium wasn't severely compromised. It would be fine; he could tell Wes he wasn't interested in whatever guilt-laden sob story his parents cooked up this time, that he wanted to stay here, with his friends, and not be carted off to some insane asylum to be pumped full of drugs against his will.

"So? What's the story this time?" he asked once Wes settled in on the little stool he kept near the keyboard Blaine had 'acquired' for him as a birthday present that summer. "Someone dying? Need my signature to keep one of their lucrative contracts? What do they want now, Wes?"

Wes sighed, scrubbing a hand through his hair in a gesture that was so painfully familiar Soul's breath caught in his throat. "I'm not here for them, I'm here for you. _Fuck,_ Soul, it's been five years, five years you wouldn't return my messages or talk to me, five years I had to go through your overprotective _roommate_ in order to know if my little brother was still alive!" He sucked in a huge breath and said, more calmly, "I miss you. I've _missed_ you. I don't know what I did to deserve getting shut out so completely, but please, give me a chance to fix it."

The edge of Soul's bed crinkled under the force of his grip. "You agreed with Mom and Dad to send me off to one of their little faraway condos to be drugged up and left to half-exist," he snarled, years of pent-up rage and hurt finding purchase through the alcohol. "You can't 'fix' thinking I was better off in some institution, shoved under the rug so the Evans name wouldn't be tainted by someone so obviously beyond help!"

Wes looked horrified even to Soul's blurry eyes, but that didn't cure the simmering hurt and betrayal that was burning a hole through his gut, so he added, "You've always made things worse," and left. The hallway spun around him but he didn't care, didn't worry about how eyes were on him as he headed to the front door and stumbled through it. He wasn't going far, just the nice maple tree around the corner where he could get some fucking space and maybe think for a moment.

It was cold, though, much colder than he remembered when he'd greeted Maka earlier. He hadn't brought a jacket in his rush to leave, but he also sure as hell wasn't going back in there, so he bared his teeth, wrapped his arms around himself, and strode the block and a half to the young maple sitting outside another street of row houses. The wind was picking up, since night came at the unholy hour of 4:30 PM these days, so Soul sat against the tree with his back to the wind and brought his knees to his chest, the involuntary shivers blending with what was left of his adrenaline rush.

The first sob was meant to be cathartic, to let off a little steam so he could compose himself and head back to the party. But one turned into another, and then another, and then he simply stopped counting as his abs contracted and his breath stuttered and he wondered if this was how it was going to be for the rest of his life.

Then something was draped around his shoulders.

Startled, he looked up and around and - _shit,_ why was Maka here?

"Lift your arms," she said, and something about the way her voice sounded so _sure,_ so in control, broke down what little remained of his walls after the alcohol. He complied, and then his hands were being guided into something warm and the well-worn kind of soft he associated with his oldest hoodie. It helped his shivering, somewhat.

She slid down next to him, back against the tree, and only then did Soul realize she was just in a crew cut sweater and some earmuffs. "I can't take your jacket," he began, trying to shake his way out of it, but Maka just batted away his feeble attempts and zipped it up to his chin.

"It's thirty-five degrees out, Soul, this isn't a negotiation," she said, and wow, there was a little starburst of gold around her irises; who knew eyes could do that?

"Why are you doing this?" he asked, because usually it was Anya who came running when he had moments like this, and Maka - well, she'd been right; they hardly knew each other.

"Because it's the right thing to do," she said, and then frowned in a distracted way, like she had almost remembered something important. "Wes said he had some sudden business to attend to. Everyone's having dessert back at your place."

"Wes left?" Soul asked, beginning to regret the quantity and variety of alcohol he had consumed in the last few hours.

"Mm."

Soul shivered again, and nestled into the jacket, which smelled kind of nice, actually, a little like something herbal mixed with something citrus.

"You don't have to tell me anything if you don't want to," Maka said after a couple minutes while Soul scrubbed at his face and tried to moderate his breathing. "But I'll listen if you do."

Soul thought of all the history between him and his brother, and the weight of it was enough to make him want to sleep right there on the sidewalk. "Thanks, but I'm good."

She was quiet for a moment longer, and then asked, "What's your favorite meatball recipe?"

The change in subject was enough to make him look at her and blink a few times. "My..?"

"Favorite meatball recipe, yes. I was thinking about trying to make some, but I've never done it before, and from what I've read the meat and herb or spice blends can really make a difference on both texture and satiety."

He stared at her for a moment, and then said the first thing that came to mind because his filter was long since gone, "Wow, you're a real nerd, huh?"

She elbowed him for that, but it was a friendly jab, or at least seemed that way given his intimate familiarity with her true strength. "I like to be informed before doing new things, so if that makes me a nerd, so be it."

"Okay, I'll tell you my grandma's recipe, but if you tell it to anyone else, I'll have to kill you both," he said, leaning back against the tree with his head tilted so he could still see her face.

Her answering smile was like the opening notes of a symphony, and Soul forgot how to break eye contact like a normal person because it was the first time he'd seen her look so unguarded, and it was blinding.

So he told her about his grandmother's recipe and how many times she'd chide him not to take little fingerfuls of butter while they cooked, and how Wes would sometimes come in and save him from having to do the dishes so he could get some alone time after the hustle and bustle of being in the kitchen. When he had to stop talking because another round of tears closed his throat, Maka cut through the silence with stories about adventures she had with her childhood friend snatching snacks from their kitchen while her father was passed out on the couch, and how her mother would smile at her when she brought home little gold-starred report cards every quarter. Even though he got himself under control faster than he thought he would, he stayed still and listened to her talk and talk and talk because something about this exchange felt like it was dressing old wounds.

"You ready to go back? I'm actually getting cold now," Maka said after some time, and _fuck,_ how could he have not noticed it had gotten dark? Trying to stand answered that question as the world tilted in a way that did not make his stomach happy.

"Yeah, let's go," he said, finally managing to unzip her jacket and hand it back to her. "Thanks for letting me borrow this."

"No problem," she said, snuggling back into it as they made the very short walk back to his apartment.

Back inside, the mood was tense. Blaine was sitting on the couch with his hands steepled while Kid rubbed small circles in his back, and Anya was bustling around the kitchen keeping up a very strained conversation with Tsubaki.

At Soul and Maka's arrival, all conversations stopped and there was a beat where Soul could _feel_ everyone's questions. So he put on a tired smile and said, "Hey guys, I just needed some air. Everything's cool."

The look on Anya's face said that everything was most definitely not cool, but he figured he could deal with that after their guests had left. "Did I miss dessert?" he asked, hoping this would get things back to as close to normal as possible even though the thought of having more food made him swallow a wave of nausea.

"Not at all. A few of us had some while we were waiting for you to get back, but there's plenty left." Anya gestured the the pies and cookie platter sitting on the counter by the wine, and yeah, no, that wasn't going to end well.

"Maka, would you like any?" he asked, hoping the desperation in his eyes would reach her.

"Sure, I'll have some, and get you that water you mentioned," she said without any of the threatening or chiding inflection he'd have expected since he never actually said anything about water, and walked over to help herself to their cups.

Soul wandered into the living room and took a seat that he immediately regretted because it made the room spin, but he didn't have time to focus on that because Blaine flounced over almost as soon as his ass hit the couch cushion.

"Way to make an exit, bro," he said, plunking himself down directly in front of Soul. "After whatever went down in your room, Wes said something about one of his designers needing his help immediately and then just split without waiting to say goodbye. You okay, dude?"

The room was still spinning, but thankfully Maka walked over with a tall glass of water before sitting on his other side to begin picking at her plate of pumpkin pie. He took a few grateful sips before answering. "Yeah, I'm fine. Really just needed some air."

Blaine looked at him like he didn't buy it, but Kid put a hand on his shoulder and that seemed to be all he needed to drop it. "All right, well, you know where to find me if someone needs their knees broken." He got up and stretched his hands over his head, contemplative. "How about I bring out the sax and-"

"None of that disruptive noise while we have company," Anya cut in, joining them on the couch. "Besides, does Soul look like that kind of... _music_...is what he needs right now?"

"Let's put a movie on," Tsubaki suggested, coming to sit on the adjoining couch with Liz. "Something upbeat."

"Rom com, rom com, rom com!" Blaine chanted, looking like Christmas came early. "Can we watch _Love, Actually_ or _Practical Magic_? Or maybe _10 Things I Hate About You_?" He sighed and draped himself across Kid's lap. "Kid always was the Bianca to my Cameron."

Liz rolled her eyes. "Rom coms are so boring. Let's get some _Fast and Furious_ up in here."

Soul tuned out the rest of their movie bickering and continued sipping at his water in the hopes he'd be able to fight back the hangover that felt like it was waiting for him to drop his guard. He did notice that Maka's plate was empty, which filled him with that warm pride; yes, he still had this, still had the ability to cook the kind of food that made people happy, and Wes and his parents would never be able to take that away from him.

It looked like they compromised on _Pacific Rim_ , which naturally devolved into conversations about respective drift compatibilities, and Blaine was in the middle of arguing about why he and Maka would definitely be drift compatible when Soul got up to use the bathroom. He thought he just had to pee, but his stomach was still not settled and it couldn't hurt to be near the toilet, just in case.

Soul relieved himself and then lingered in the bathroom, hands on the counter, staring at himself in the mirror. A few broken blood vessels in his eyes, ah - that'd be why everyone had looked so concerned. He splashed some water onto his face for good measure, and pulled his hair over his shoulder to finger-brush a few snarls out, but he kept coming back to meet his own gaze in the mirror. There was a plea lurking in it, but he didn't know what for.

A tentative knock at the door made him jump.

"You okay in there?" came Maka's muffled voice.

Soul sighed, and went to open the door; time's up. "Yeah, I'm fine. The water's helping."

"Good," she said, the relief on her face making a little warmth pool in his chest. "The movie's finally on, I thought I'd see if you actually wanted to watch it."

Soul blinked at her consideration, then gave her a half-hearted smile. "Yeah, I'll watch. Might wanna lie down, though."

Maka snorted. "I'm sure we won't have to try hard to convince Blaine to move closer to Kid."

"True."

They settled back in the living room with little fuss, and Soul was allowed to take up one of the couches to watch the movie in a much more stomach-friendly reclining position. Before they unpaused the movie, though, Anya gasped to herself and said, "Oh, Soul, we need to post our Thanksgiving wishes picture on the blog!" and ran to get her smartphone.

Soul had nearly forgotten about that, their annual celebratory post with links to the stuffed squash and brown butter sage ravioli they'd prepared for this year's holiday recipes. He had the somewhat hazy idea to go like it from his personal account once it posted, but he couldn't seem to find his phone in his pocket. A screen lit up on the coffee table though, and that must be his - he had turned on post notifications for their page so he could always be sure any friends who viewed his like activity got to see it.

Except.

"What are you doing with my phone?" Maka asked from where she sat on the floor next to the couch armrest. "Is something wrong?"

Soul glanced again at the screen - _her_ phone's screen - and confirmed there was indeed a notification for his blog's post, just a minute hence. Not knowing what else to do, he said, "I noticed you're a fan of my blog," and then there was a rapid cycle of emotion across her face not unlike watching a fast-forwarded VHS film.

" _You're_ Vieille Cafetière?" she said, incredulity on every line of her features. "You have some of my favorite recipes! That massaman curry, and the spaghetti pie, and - that's really you?"

Soul nodded, still taken aback by the intensity of her response. "Yeah, it's what I do on the side when I'm not at Trader Moe's."

"Wow." She took her phone from his hands and looked at the screen for a moment. "That's cool."

 _That_ made him choke out a laugh, because - when was the last time anybody thought he was _cool?_ Soul, college dropout, blight upon the family name, arguable waste of space; cool? "You must have terribly low standards," he said, adjusting his position on the couch.

"Just watch the movie," she muttered, squeezing her phone a little, but there was a small smile on her face that hadn't been there before, and a tension in her shoulders seemed to have melted away.

Soul brought his attention back to the giant robots, but he couldn't stop turning over Maka's reaction in his head. A tentative smile tugged at his lips.

Cool, huh?


	5. 5

**5\. And I don't know what you want me to be, but I don't want to be perfect anymore**

It had been a few days since Thanksgiving, but Maka was still not over the fact that she knew the man behind Vieille Cafetière. All those nights spent staring at the those photos before she fell asleep because something about the way they seemed to capture a simple truth relaxed her, all of his words, that heartfelt yearning to preserve his memories in the recipes he created-

And it had been Soul all along.

"What are you smiling about?" Harvar asked as he wandered into the kitchen, yawning wide and scratching his belly. "You've been so...perky. Are you finally taking that fish oil Kilik recommended?"

"Hm? No, I haven't been able to stomach the thought of spending sixty dollars on pills."

"Then why are you so happy?"

Maka looked up from stirring in just a touch of nutmeg into her oats - a wonderful suggestion she'd found on Soul's blog - and shrugged. "I found out a friend is behind one of the food Instagrams I love."

Harvar tilted his head at her. "This the same friend who invited you over to spend Thanksgiving with them?"

"Yes, is that a problem?" she said, getting a bad feeling about where this was going.

"No, au contraire, I think you should invite him over. I'd _love_ to meet him."

That dangerous gleam was back in his eyes, though, and Maka said, "Only if you promise not to be mean to him. I know you think you're helping, but you just end up acting like Papa when you get all protective."

"Me? Never. It'll be fine, just do it," he said, a grim sort of excitement in his eyes, and Maka wondered again at how she kept ending up with all of these overprotective men in her life.

"I don't know, I'll think about it," she hedged, wondering why the thought gave her pause at all. They were clearly on friendly terms now; what was the problem?

"All right, well, I'll catch you later for marathon night. I'm just wrapping up the stream now, and then I'm going to sleep for a little," he said, leaning over to crack his back.

"Sleep well."

Harvar grabbed his glass of water and went back to his room while Maka took a seat at their little dining table to eat her oatmeal.

She had more important things to work on, though, things like preparing for her finals and dealing with the message Mama had left her the other day about job interview preparation and why she hadn't yet contacted her about next steps. It was still on her phone, something she had only been able to listen to the first time out of sheer surprise, and couldn't quite bring herself to listen to again.

Her mother had sounded _disappointed_ , which was usually enough to trigger a rapid and rabid desire to fix anything that had been deemed unacceptable. For the first time, though, her gut reaction was rebellion; _how_ could her mother say she wasn't trying hard enough when she was regularly up until two or three in the morning reading case files and crafting the most well-cited and logical arguments? Resentment bubbled up, hot and fierce, before she remembered that this was _Mama_ she was thinking about, the one who raised her and fed her and clothed her. She had no right to be so ungrateful, especially not since she was offering her the chance to apply for such a prestigious position.

Her oatmeal grew cold as she stared out their living room window. So much to do, and not as much time as she'd like to prepare for it. She glanced at her phone, where there was a small notification for a new post by Vieille Cafetière - by _Soul._ Her fingers swiped into it almost automatically, and she was greeted by an enticing picture of muffin tin leftover cups, filled with what looked like mashed potatoes, stuffing, and turkey. She recognized the table it was shot on, and marveled at the fact that she had been there, in that space, just a few days prior.

There was no time for such thoughts, though. Maka turned on her laptop and tamped down the residual resentment at her mother for trying to police her every move, and started back in on her readings. Every so often, her gaze would flit to her phone and she'd have to resist the urge to thumb back into Vieille Cafetière because the urge to reread all of the stories with him in mind was almost irresistible.

It got to a point where she just decided to take a walk, and because her subconscious was a conniving little wretch, she ended up in Trader Moe's staring at the back of Soul's head while he fixed the banana pyramid. His ponytail was a little lopsided, and Maka found herself wanting to walk over and fix it, maybe see if it was as soft as it looked. She gripped her handbasket harder instead.

"Maka?"

Soul turned around to grab another box of bananas from his dolly and saw her, giving her a friendly wave and - oh no, now she'd have to talk to him. "Hello," she said, trying to think of something to talk about because her usually buzzing mind had gone silent.

"What're you gonna make this time?" he asked, walking over to her. "Something from the blog? I could give you some suggestions if you want."

"Um, sure, that'd be great," Maka said, still trying to get her brain to start functioning.

"So, what'll it be?" He looked at her expectantly, a new, almost excited glimmer in his eyes.

Panicking, she blurted, "Can you teach me how to make steak? It's been so long since I had red meat," and then clamped her mouth shut because she just as good as invited him over.

He also seemed somewhat taken aback. "Yeah, of course I could. Do you want me to - I mean, is it cool if I come to your place? You're definitely welcome back at mine, if you prefer that."

"Yeah, my place is fine," she said, too busy worrying about her blush to think of what she was continuing to get herself into. "I'll text you my address - oh, I guess you'll need my number - wait, I have _your_ number." Stupid, stupid, _stupid_ girl, get it together. She took her phone out and sent him a quick text with her address.

His smile was shy when he asked, "Around noon this Saturday sound good?"

"Yeah, works for me," she said, still trying to keep it together. "I'll see you then."

He gave her one last smile before going back to his bananas, and then she wandered the store a little longer to pick up a bag of frozen vegetables she could add to her leftover rice and beans. When she got home, Harvar was in the kitchen making himself a sandwich, but turned around to give her a sharp grin when she told him about inviting Soul over this weekend for lunch.

"I'll clear my schedule," he said, smiling ominously.

"I will put a chair against your door if you try to be difficult," she said, going to put her few groceries away.

"Joke's on you, I swapped out the hinges so it opens inwards," he replied with that smirk still on his face. "Don't worry, I'm just gonna test his mettle, is all."

"Okay, but I reserve the right to put you in an armbar if you get too uppity."

He took a bite of his sandwich and said, pointing it at her, "I'll be the perfect gentleman."

/

 _Gentlemen did not walk around the apartment half-naked carrying full-length wooden swords._

"Harvar, what are you doing?" Maka hissed, glancing at her phone because Soul was going to be there any minute. Harvar had been as quiet as a mouse all morning, and Maka thought that maybe he'd forgotten about his absurd need to test Soul. She could not have been more wrong.

"I'm just practicing my forms," he said, bringing the sword up in a graceful arc before turning on the balls of his feet to bring it down in front of him. "Don't mind me."

"Why are you only wearing pants, don't tell me that insanely deep cut robe counts as a shirt."

"It's exercise, Maka. Have to let the breeze wick away sweat from my lithe form."

Maka was about to lay into him further, but there was a knock at the door. With a final warning glare at Harvar, she went to answer it. Soul was there, tugging on his ponytail and holding a large tote bag filled with groceries.

"Come on in," she said, gesturing him through the door. He had one shoe off when he noticed Harvar doing his sword forms, and sort of froze to stare at his bared arm muscles for so long he nearly fell over.

"You must be Maka's roommate," he said, eyeing the wooden sword at Harvar's hip and probably the way Harvar's 'shirt' had a neckline down to his navel. He put down the groceries to extend his hand. "I'm Soul, it's a pleasure."

"The pleasure's all mine," Harvar replied, taking Soul's hand and, by the look on Soul's face, giving it more than a friendly squeeze.

"Let's get these ingredients put away first," Maka said, giving Harvar a meaningful look that he just blinked at.

"I'll just be finishing up my katas," Harvar said, and went back to his ridiculous form practice, eyes never leaving Soul.

"Don't mind him, he's just - we've known each other since we were little, and it's kind of like we're siblings, at this point. He's wary of anyone whose apartment I wake up drunk in."

"Right," Soul said, looking a bit uncomfortable.

"Anyway, let's get this all put away - you said the meat would need to marinate a little?"

Soul took out a gorgeous looking pair of flank steaks from one of the bags and looked around. "Yeah, that's right. Could I have a bowl, a plate, and access to your spices? I brought some chili powders that are less common, but figured you'd have the basics."

Maka nodded and got him all of his requested items, and watched as he whisked together some oil, cilantro, and fresh garlic.

"There are ways you can get the garlic smell off your fingers," he said while expertly mincing a few cloves, "but I kind of like the way it reminds me of the meals I made, you know?"

Maka looked down at her hands, small and slightly calloused, and then at Soul's, long and deft and covered in bits of garlic skin. She found herself wanting to touch them, to see if maybe their texture would help her better understand this feeling he'd described, and then promptly squeezed her hands into fists because that was just _weird._

She helped him find a place for the meat to marinate in the fridge before leading him into the living room, hoping to whatever deity was listening that Harvar had put a shirt on and left that sword in his room. Sadly, it seemed like the gods were in the mood to make her life a spectacle today.

To his credit, Harvar _was_ actually dressed this time, but he was also sitting on the couch facing the kitchen, fingers steepled.

"So, Soul, what we like to do around here to welcome guests is play some good ol'-fashioned video games." He gestured to their television, where - _no_ , not this, not again.

"Are you familiar with the N64, or Nintendo 64?" he asked, voice just short of patronizing, as he gestured to the console he must have hooked up while they were in the kitchen. "I brought out a few games I thought we could try. Doesn't that sound fun?"

"Uh, sure?" Soul looked between Maka and Harvar, both of whom were trying to communicate to each other with intense facial expressions when Soul wasn't looking, and then shrugged. "We have a couple hours before the meat is done marinating, might as well."

"Wonderful! Now, on the docket: slaps-only Goldeneye; 150 cc Special Cup Mario Kart; Pikachu-only Dream Land Smash Bros, no items; and finally, all of Pokemon Stadium's minigames." Harvar leaned back and put his hands behind his head. "Think you can handle it?"

Maka was about to step in to stop this _ridiculous_ excuse for a pissing contest when something shifted in Soul's expression, and he reached up to change his ponytail into a bun that was just a little bigger than Harvar's. "Guess you'll find out," he said, something hard in his eyes and, oh - why were they like this?

Harvar frowned, clearly not expecting to have his challenge met with enthusiasm, but got up to turn on the N64 anyway. Soul accepted the green controller Harvar handed him and then did some complicated finger motions where he hit every button on the controller. "Just warming up," he told Harvar, lopsided grin giving his eyes a somewhat menacing cast.

"Let's just do this," Harvar muttered, and then Maka simply gave up considering what she could do to stop this train wreck because once Harvar insisted on putting someone through the Gaming Gauntlet, there wasn't much else to be done.

The opening music to Goldeneye began to play with all of its strings and electric guitar, and while Maka took a seat between them, Harvar deftly navigated the menu until the split screen was set and they both had characters locked in.

"May the best man win," said Harvar before launching them into the first round.

"Oh, he will," said Soul, hands tight around his controller.

And so Maka watched as their two boxy characters traversed a maze-like level that had a bathroom for some reason, picking up ammo for weapons that were turned off as they sought to pummel each other to death with their blocky fists. Harvar took an early lead with four kills, but Soul was making a comeback when Harvar managed to take the winning tenth kill by hiding around a corner.

"Everybody gets one," Soul muttered. "Mario Kart's next, right?"

Harvar was already up and exchanging games, cockiness dripping off of the way he gave the next cartridge a cursory blow. "Yes, it is, and how about this: I'll let you pick your character first, since I won the last round."

"Oh, that won't be a problem," Soul said, and waited until they were on the character select screen. "I'm sure you won't want who I'm going for."

Harvar snorted but hovered over Toad anyway, a mocking tilt to his head as he seemed to ask _are you sure?_ Soul autolocked Bowser, and Harvar made an amused sound. "Bold move. I guess you have to try _something_ to get ahead." Maka elbowed him discreetly.

"I play to win," Soul said, and with that, they were off. Soul took the first map by a cleverly placed banana peel in DK's Jungle Parkway; Harvar edged him out on Yoshi Valley with some slick use of red shells; Soul used a Starman from sixth place to run over Harvar for the photo-finish win on the Banshee Boardwalk, and then -

"Looks like we settle this on Rainbow Road," Harvar said, all traces of amusement gone.

"Looks like it." Soul wiped his hands on his pants and rolled out his shoulders, and - _was this really necessary?_ Maka glowered between the two of them and took another deep breath to keep herself from simply turning off the console, since Soul had technically agreed to this.

She had just finished being impressed at Soul's daring shortcut attempt on the final lap when her phone began to ring. Distracted, she took a quick look at the caller and almost sprained her eyes doing a double-take because _her mother was calling._ As quickly as she could, she clambered over the sofa and sprinted into her room to take the call, cursing herself for losing track of time.

"Hello?" she said as soon as she walked through her door.

"'Hello, Maka speaking' is what you mean," came Mama's cool voice. "You're going to be interviewing for a professional position; act like it."

"Yes, ma'am," Maka said, chastened.

"I'm calling to confirm your interview date of January 18," Mama continued amid the sounds of papers rustling. "And to set up some appointments with you before then to go over the basics. We have to make sure you are fit to stand before the hiring committee, after all."

"Yes, ma'am."

"How has this semester gone? I have a work relationship with Professor Stein, I might grab lunch with him sometime and get a read on his opinions of your progress."

Maka froze, turning away from her open door to go lie on her bed. "I don't see why that would be necessary," she began, trying to think of how she could rationalize to her mother that she wasn't top of the class anymore. "I am still doing well."

"Always back up your assertions, Maka," Mama said, that splinter of disdain back in her voice and - no, she was going to find out, she was going to think that Maka really was her father's daughter after all.

"I am third in my class, after the last exam," Maka said, trying to keep her lungs full of air. "But I'm on track to be higher than that after our next mock trial and final papers-"

"Did you forget our deal?" Mama's voice was cool, immoveable. "I would help you get a foot in the door as long as you continued to excel. Does third place sound like excelling, to you?"

"No," Maka whispered, throat tight.

"So?" Mama was unrelenting, and Maka knew she couldn't leave the silence hanging for much longer.

"So I will outperform my classmates by the end of the semester, and send you a detailed file with all of my coursework and graded assignments," Maka recited, struggling not to let her voice waver. "I won't disappoint you."

"Very well," Mama said. "I will call you in two weeks to get another update. You have roughly seven weeks to get yourself to a hirable place. Have your resume ready for our next conversation and send me the file as soon as you're done with your last final. Goodbye."

A small click and Maka was alone in her room again. She took a deep, shaky breath, but there was a small squeak that sounded awfully like someone was -

"Soul?" She'd turned around and saw the end of his ponytail float away from her door.

Another floorboard squeaked as he paused. "Yes?" he said, sounding more than a little uncertain.

"Do you need something?" she asked, swallowing a few times to loosen her throat and maybe sound normal again.

"No, I just wanted to let you know I won the Mario Kart battle, Rainbow Road has always been my favorite. But, uh, is everything okay? I heard-" he stopped again, took a small breath. "It sounded like an intense conversation."

"How much did you hear?" Maka said, fear surging in her chest - not someone else who knows she's a failure, she's barely had a chance to prove to Soul she's worth the time to cook for her -!

"Not a lot, but enough." Another beat. "Wanna check on the marinade with me? It could probably do with a stir."

"Yeah, sure, give me one minute." Maka strode to her little stand mirror and ran her fingers through her hair, then practiced a couple confident smiles for good measure. Couldn't have them thinking something was wrong.

She almost bumped into Soul when she left her room; he had apparently elected to wait for her right outside her room instead of go to the kitchen without her.

He just gave a bashful half-shrug and tugged his ponytail over his shoulder before heading back to the living room. "Give us five to check the marinade, Harvar."

Her roommate made a noncommittal noise and went back to switching out cartridges, a small scowl on his face that almost made Maka smiled, because when was the last time Harvar had had a real challenge?

Soul was already pulling out the meat from the fridge when she walked in. "Looks good to me," he said, using a pair of forks to turn the meat over in the bowl. "Come here, you have to smell this."

"But it's still raw," she said, nevertheless meeting him near the bowl. "That seems gross, somehow."

"Trust me," he said, sincerity in his eyes alongside something else that made her heart jump.

She obligingly bent to take a whiff of the meat, and, oh - she didn't know you could smell salt, nor how good it smelled paired with the raw garlic and cool rosemary. "Wow, that's not bad," she said, looking up at his pleased face and wondering how she never noticed the little laugh lines in the corner of his eyes.

"It'll be even better once we cook it," he said, and re-wrapped the bowl to put it back in the fridge. "It should be done by the time Harvar and I finish our games."

Maka sighed. "I'm sorry about him, he just - gets like this, sometimes."

Soul snorted. "Listen, you've met Blaine. This feels like a perfectly balanced exchange to me."

"You have a point," Maka said with a wry smile, and led them back out to the living room where Harvar was tabbing around the Smash Bros menu with a moody set to his jaw.

"Okay, let's finish this," Soul said with a flourish of cracked knuckles as he took his seat. "You said all Pikachu, no items, Kirby's level, right?"

"Yep." Harvar had his goggles down, mouth a thin line, and Maka just resigned herself to dealing with his sore-loser behind later.

"I'll let you pick which Pikachu party hat you want," Soul said innocently, and _really_ , what was with these boys?

Harvar just hit start.

So Maka let herself forget about her mother's phone call for just a little longer while Soul and Harvar jumped around the screen electrocuting each other with thunderbolts from the sky and performing well-timed headbutts. Harvar won this round, but when they did a separate match with all characters open at Harvar's suggestion, Soul embarrassed him by autolocking Donkey Kong and proceeding to get one kill ahead just so he could murder/suicide off the edge of the level for the rest.

Pokemon Stadium minigames were so close, and so silly, that by the end of it Harvar and Soul were actually joking together about the various button-mashing techniques one could use to complete them. They got so off-track talking about different _other_ games, in fact, that they put their controllers down with the final minigame unfinished so they could pursue the conversation.

Eventually, Maka cleared her throat and said, "Is it time to check on the meat?"

Soul jumped a little and had the grace to look abashed. "Yeah, it is. Let's go." To Harvar, he said, grinning, "I think we can say that we're pretty evenly matched. You want in on this lunch?"

Harvar pushed his goggles up to give them a considering look. "Nah, I think I'm gonna stream a little. I normally would have started a few hours ago, but, you know, had to meet Maka's friend and all." He cleared his throat. "Anyway, you seem like an okay dude, you have my blessing to supply Maka with as much meat as you'd like." He then got up and began to disassemble the N64 while Soul gave Maka a very concerned look.

"He's just being a weirdo, don't mind him," Maka said through her hands, mortification pulsing in every vein.

"About that meat, then?" Soul said with a crooked smile.

"Yes, please."

They left Harvar to finish unhooking the wires from the television and came back into the kitchen, where Soul rummaged around in his tote bag until he made a little happy sound and tugged out a cast iron skillet. "Nothing cooks steak quite like iron," he said fondly, and flipped it up into his other hand to put on the stovetop. "But first-" he took out a bag of red potatoes and a couple heads of broccoli- "we have to get the veggies going."

Maka watched with interest as Soul taught her how to chop a head of broccoli into more palatable florets, how to slice and season potatoes for the right combination of crispy outside and soft inside, and why browned meat tasted so good thanks to the Maillard reaction. He taught her how to mince garlic, too, and laughed at her delighted gasp when she first smacked flat of the knife blade on the clove with the heel of her hand and peeled it all off in one go.

At one point, he had to correct her form, long arms reaching around from behind to guide her hands. His breath on her neck, his low voice in her ear was _distracting,_ and adrenaline made her buzz when he placed his hands on hers. Something about the softness of his skin and the way he hesitated, just briefly, before touching her kicked her world into hyper-focus; now, she could pick out the individual nicks in the cutting board, distinguish between the two different chiles in their marinade on the counter, and could almost imagine the way his Adam's apple must look when he swallowed mid-sentence.

The real fun, though, was when Soul put the steaks on the pan. He'd been right; they smelled _amazing,_ and the way they crackled and sizzled as Soul spooned leftover marinade over them made Maka salivate. "They look incredible," she said, watching the oil and herbs bubble on top of the meat.

"They'll taste even better," Soul said, in the middle of checking on the oven fries and garlic roasted broccoli. "Would you set the table? These are about ready."

"Sure," Maka said, and went to grab plates and cutlery.

Soul was waiting for her when she came back in, both steaks on a clean cutting board. "I wanted to show you how to cut these so they'll be nice and tender."

Maka remembered a video of his she'd watched the other week, that mentioned something about grain. She told him this, and he smiled that crooked smile and said, "Yeah, you want to cut against the grain." He pointed to the long lines in the steak running longitudinally. "Cutting across these shortens the muscle fibers so they're not as chewy, and you get all the flavor of a more expensive cut for much less money."

"Huh." Maka examined the slices, artfully laid out on the board by Soul. "Cool."

Then, of all things, Soul coughed a little and bustled to the oven to pull out the roasted vegetables, but the tips of his ears were red and Maka had no idea what she could have done to embarrass him. She let it go in favor of grabbing some serving bowls for him to put the veggies in and helping him give the counters a small wipe down.

He pulled a bottle of wine from the tote when Maka caught him hovering by it, a hesitant look on his face. "I'm not sure how much you like wine, but I brought this just in case, so..."

He looked so torn up about it that Maka gave him the most reassuring smile she had and said, "I'd love to have some. We don't have wine glasses here, though, so I hope you're okay to drink them out of plastic water glasses."

"It's not ideal, but we'll make it work," he said, and brought the corkscrew that must have been in the bag to the table, too.

Soul poured the wine first to let it rest, which was apparently important, and gestured to her to serve herself from the meat and vegetables. Maka scooped a hearty portion of both the oven fries and broccoli onto her plate before passing each to Soul so she could spear a few slices of steak.

Once Soul took his fill, they touched their faded university cups and toasted to good health. Maka had to mentally slap herself to stop staring at the way the softer lighting of their dining nook cast appealing shadows along his jawline and the planes of his face.

Then she took her first bite, and the world sharpened once more.

It was difficult to process both the rich, herby flavors of the steak and the way that Soul was looking at her, eyes full of a defenseless hope, and the combination made everything around her seem somehow _more_. "It's delicious," she said, committing to memory the way his shoulders relaxed and how his smile was perfectly balanced from this angle.

"I'm glad."

They ate in silence for the next few minutes, until Soul put his fork down and looked at her like he was trying to decide whether he'd face physical violence for asking what was on his mind. "So, I know I shouldn't have heard some stuff earlier, but it's been eating at me. Who was that, on the phone?"

Maka set down her own silverware. "Why do you ask?"

"Well." Soul stopped to take a sip of wine, staring into his cup for a moment. "It sounded like your boss, or whoever that was, didn't care much about what you thought. All I heard were some 'yes ma'ams' and what sounded like a canned sentence of yours, but it was more the way you said it that made me think something wasn't right." He took another drink, and looked down at his empty plate.

"You know, when I was studying in France back in undergrad, I met this man. He told me something, that even the strongest of hearts need help staying warm sometimes. It sorta stuck with me, this idea that even strong people need others, especially since I have never felt particularly strong. It's the reason I started Vieille Cafetière in the first place, because maybe then someone else who was lying awake at four in the morning endlessly refreshing their social media could find a little bit of warmth, too." Soul looked up, and the mix of sincerity and pain in his eyes made something in Maka's chest clench. "I guess what I'm saying is, I hope you're not dealing with whatever that is alone."

Maka pushed around a small piece of broccoli on her plate. Soul's words brought back that sense of rebellion, of the wrongness of Mama's words that she'd tried so hard to ignore earlier. But what could she do? This was her dream, to be the best student and join her mother at the most prestigious corporate law firm in the country. The wrongness tugged at her again, and for the first time Maka looked directly at the fact that she did not want to be a corporate lawyer at all.

"Are you okay?" Soul broke through her rapidly spiraling thoughts, and his concerned face brought her somewhat back to the present.

"Yeah, I'm fine," she said, but then more and more of the wrongness began to bubble out from between the cracks her revelation had created, and the room was getting smaller and her lungs were getting tighter and oh god, not this, not with Soul here. Out of desperation, she added, "Actually, no, I'm not feeling great, the room is - breathing, it's hard," and felt the wrongness recede a little bit.

Worry flashed through Soul's eyes as he stood up to come over to her side of the table. "Come with me to the couch, I think I can-"

"No, can't sit," Maka gasped, standing up to begin the pacing she knew would give her some reprieve.

On her return trip around the room, she thought she saw understanding in Soul's face, and he said, seeming to choose his words with care, "Has this happened to you before?"

"Few times. Goes away," Maka panted, still walking around the perimeter of the room and taking gulping breaths every few steps.

"Come here, I think I know something that can help." Soul took a seat on the couch and gestured for her to sit next to him, and nope, that wouldn't do, she had to keep moving or she'd never breathe.

"Can't, won't be able to breathe," she said on an exhale, and made another loop around the room.

"Maka." The urgency in his voice made her look over, and again he had that wide-open look in his eyes that tugged on her in a different way. "Could you trust me?"

Almost instantly, her walls roared up, that inner voice snarling _we don't need help, we're not weak_ , and Maka was on the verge of sending him home when he added, "Please." It was the final crack in her armor; she had been pushed and prodded and tested her whole life, but this simple request was all it took to break her. For the first time that she could remember, she let someone else take the lead.

Maka sank into the couch and looked at Soul, waiting for whatever it was he wanted to show her. He looked relieved, grateful even, like accepting his help was a favor she had done for _him_.

"Okay, what I want you to do is breathe with me. Inhale when I do, exhale when I do. Can you do that?"

She nodded, and waited for his first breath. Now that she no longer felt as though she had to handle everything all at once, the muscles in her chest felt looser, and she was able to find the rhythm in his breath with ease. It was helping, this steady beat, and throughout each cycle he never looked away. She felt held, in a weird way, like he was saying through that connection _I'm here and I'm not leaving._

After a couple minutes of this breathing cycle, Maka felt well enough to clear her throat and say, "Thank you, I feel better now."

Soul finished his last breath and nodded. "I'm glad. Was it something I said? That made you have a panic attack?" He pulled his ponytail over his shoulder to give it a few tugs. "You looked like you'd seen a ghost or something, after I was done talking."

Maka thought about Mama and her expectations, and then the wrongness came back and began to grip her heart until she looked at Soul and remembered that she wasn't alone. The wrongness receded.

But - "Panic attack? I'm not scared of anything," she said, some of her usual stubbornness coming back now that she could breathe normally.

"I'm pretty sure that's what just happened," Soul said. There was compassion in his eyes that didn't make her want to break something, for once. "Used to happen to me a lot when I was younger. It doesn't always mean you're scared in a traditional sense; it could be more like you're worried about what will happen if you can't do something, or how someone might react to something you're gonna do."

Maka chewed her lip and thought about that ballooning sense of doom that came before every one of these episodes. "So how do I stop them?"

Soul gave her a rueful smile. "That's the hard part. Sometimes it helps to distract yourself for a while, sometimes it helps to talk about the thing that caused it. Depends on the person and the day."

"I think," Maka said, probing the wrongness that now seemed much less intimidating, "talking would help." She took a breath. "I realized that something I thought I wanted my whole life was actually not something I wanted at all, and I'm not sure how to fix it."

Soul shifted into a more comfortable position on the couch. "Go on."

So Maka told him about growing up with Mama's plan, how her entire youth had been setting her up for the moment she became a feared corporate lawyer. The hours spent at home studying, the constant stress of comparing herself to her peers to be sure she would come out on top; all of this she told Soul like she was reciting facts before a judge. She also told him about her upcoming interview with Mama's law firm, and about all of the work she still had to do to prepare for that. Every worry, every shard of doubt or inadequacy that she shared was like leeching poison from a wound, and by the end of her explanation, she felt like she had given away half of her burden.

When she finally fell silent, Soul looked at her with a peculiar kind of respect. "You put up with so much for so long," he murmured. "The kind of strength that takes is - amazing."

Maka snorted. "Maybe in an alternate universe. If I were stronger, I wouldn't be in this mess to begin with, and would be top of my class and things would be fine-"

"Bullshit." Soul was scowling now, brows furrowed and a new intensity in his eyes. "Don't keep hurting yourself with the same kinda shit she's been telling you. You're perfectly strong now, it's her that can't see it. Next time you think something like that, pretend you hear my voice slamming it down because you shouldn't have to go around thinking you're less than you are."

It was surreal, having someone defend her when she felt at her lowest. She'd been sure that if she'd shown others this _weak_ side of her, this truth that she cannot always meet their expectations, that they'd leave and never look back. But now warmth suffused her and drove the rest of wrongness away, leaving an odd sense of clarity in its place. "I'll keep that in mind," she said, feeling more and more like herself by the minute. "I need to figure out how to tell Mama I don't want this job anymore."

"Can't you just, tell her?" Soul asked.

"I could try," Maka said grimly, tapping her fingers against the side of the couch. "I don't think she'll take well to it, though."

"All right, well, how about you start there?"

"Yeah." She took a deep, easy breath, and said, "Thanks for helping me calm down. And for coming over to cook, I learned a lot."

"No problem." He hesitated for a moment. "It sounds like stuff is gonna be stressful the next few weeks. Maybe I could help you stay fed? If it wouldn't be intrusive," he added, looking more nervous by the second.

The warmth resurged. "I think I'd like that."

/

The next few weeks were a blur, from the phone call with her mother that ended in a cold, "We will talk about this after your interview," to all of the finals preparation she had to do. Soul came over twice a week at first, then three times, and then every night, bringing ingredients or leftovers he'd made at his apartment to cook while she furiously typed on her laptop or muttered to herself about legal precedent. They'd sit down for a meal together, no matter how stressed Maka felt or how much work she had to do, and Soul would fill her in on new recipes he was testing and show her pictures from behind the scenes of his latest shoots. He also started bringing his needles and yarn so he'd have something to do after dinner while she worked on school assignments, and he would sit next to her gently clicking his gorgeous ivory needles together as he worked on what he said was a special gift for Anya. It was comfortable, and they slid into this routine as naturally as their other, newer routine, the one that distracted Maka most of all.

Sometime around Christmas, when Harvar had gone to stay with Kilik and Maka had the place to herself, Soul brought over a few holiday movies along with the usual food, saying with a sheepish smile that it was something of a tradition to him around this time of year to watch one. He had her pick one at random from his backpack, so after dinner he put on _It's A Wonderful Life_ in black and white.

And then at one point in the movie, Maka glanced over to see thin tear tracks glistening on his cheeks, his jaw tight and fist balled at his side. The angel Clarence was explaining to a grief-stricken George that his brother had died because his wish that he had never been born meant that George was no longer there to save his life, and without really thinking about it, Maka reached over and put her hand over his. He'd started, but by then she was stolidly staring at the screen because what the hell, what was she _doing,_ but after a few seconds he uncurled his fist and laced their fingers together.

After that, there were more accidental shoulder brushes, a few more cooking demonstrations standing closer than technically required, and every movie night managed to end with their hands cupped. Maka tried not to think about it too hard, but that was difficult when she took a break one night to look at Vieille Cafetière's newest post, and saw a picture of herself. It was just her hands, but she recognized her kitchen's pale yellow backsplash and the battered old French press Soul had simply left at her apartment one day so he wouldn't have to keep bringing it over.

What left her breathless, though, was the photograph itself. Soul had brought his camera over the other day, claiming he wanted to test a few shots in a new location, but she didn't think any of them were going to be put on the blog. The angle was close, intimately so, focusing on how the curve of her hand was echoed in the curve of the knife she held, and something about it projected a confidence she knew for a fact she didn't have because that had been another day Mama insisted on checking in.

Mesmerized, she couldn't look away. Was this how he saw her? Smooth lines and steel and steady confidence? The dissonance between that thought and how she saw herself, barely scrabbling to meet the lowest of standards, was almost enough to make her laugh. Instead, she bookmarked that page and read it over and over on nights she needed to see herself through other eyes, ones that called her a good friend and fiery and the smartest person he'd ever met.

And then, before she knew it, it was the eve of her interview. Soul invited her over to his apartment for a special meal, and also so Blaine would stop harassing him about when he'd get to see her next. He cooked his grandmother's meatballs over homemade pasta and Blaine brought out a special beer he'd been working on to toast her, and Maka let herself accept the care she was given.

Soul offered to go with her to the interview, and though she initially balked at the idea - _don't need help_ \- she accepted in the end, because it was nice to think that she could have a friendly face after going through what was sure to be a rough time.

They arrived at Aranea Associates thirty minutes before her appointed time, and Soul sipped a latte at a little chain coffee shop across the street while Maka continued going over what she'd say to Mama and her interviewer.

"Good luck," he told her when it was time for her to go in. "You've been working so hard, though, I'm not sure you'll need it."

"Thanks," she said, hovering outside of the sleek stainless steel doors of the firm. "I'm not so sure about that."

He buried his face into his scarf a little more and said, "I am. I'll wait for you in the lobby, okay?"

Maka nodded and they entered, Soul heading off to sit in a stiff looking leather armchair while Maka checked in at the desk. The administrative assistant dialed an extension and murmured something into the phone, then gestured her towards the elevators to his right.

"Floor twenty, take a left and walk straight until you see a plaque for the B.R.E.W. conference room," he said with a polite smile before going back to typing something on his computer.

Maka followed his instructions and ended up outside of a glass-paneled door looking into a large conference room where Mama was talking to an austere woman with long, black hair. This woman noticed her first, and gave her a smile that sent a chill up her spine when she gestured her in.

"And you must be Maka," she said, settling into her seat. "Suzume has told me so much about you."

"This is Anabelle Gorgon, head of the firm," Mama said, neatly uncrossing her heeled legs to stand. "She has graciously decided to be the one to conduct this interview." To Anabelle, she said, "Thank you again for your time. I know you won't be disappointed," and then turned to give Maka a cool smile. "I'll wait for you in my office next door when you're finished." She left after a nod to them both, and Maka was already fighting the urge to simply get up and walk out.

"So, Maka, what makes you interested in working for Aranea Associates?" Anabelle said, reclining a little and clasping her hands in her lap.

"Actually, Ms. Gorgon, I have recently done some thinking, and I am no longer interested in a position with your firm," Maka said, reminding herself to speak in measured tones. "I thank you very much for the opportunity, and wish you and your firm the best."

Anabelle raised an eyebrow, the perfect image of polite surprise. "Is that so? Well, your mother told me you may be having some doubts, but I wanted to give you a chance to hear a few reasons why joining us might be exactly what you need."

Maka went cold. This wasn't part of her script, this wasn't supposed to be a possibility.

"You see Maka, we represent the most powerful corporations in the country, even the world, some would argue," Anabelle continued, never taking her sharp eyes off of Maka. "Your mother has won us some impressive victories and ensured that our clients have little to fear from pesky regulation." She leaned in, a velvet intensity in her eyes. "Don't you want the power to shape the world?"

It was tempting, on some level. But all Maka could hear was the rushing in her ears of the wrongness roaring past, of how she wanted to defend people from exactly this kind of power imbalance, so she said, "Again, I thank you for the offer. But I think our goals do not line up."

Anabelle sighed, and shook her head. "What a pity. I've seen your grades and heard from your professors; you could have made such a wonderful addition to our firm. All right then, Maka, good luck in your future endeavors."

Maka took the dismissal with a nod and a final murmured thanks, and went one room over to knock on Mama's door.

At her brusque, "You may enter," Maka came in and swallowed the small jolt of fear at seeing Mama look genuinely surprised for a moment.

"What are you doing here? That interview was supposed to last at least another half hour," she said, putting down the stapled packet of papers she was looking through. "Unless she hired you on the spot?"

Maka took a deep breath. "No, Mama, she didn't. I told her I was no longer interested in the position. She understood, and let me go."

Mama was silent for a moment, looking at her like she had spoken in tongues. "This has been your dream since you were a little girl," she said, Maka's words finally seeming to sink in. "How could you ruin this for yourself, right at the end, after all the effort I went to to help you?" She brought a hand to her forehead. "I wanted what's best for you, and this is how you repay me."

The raw disappointment in her voice almost made Maka stop, made her beg Mama for the forgiveness and approbation she'd always, always wanted. But then she heard Soul's voice in her head reminding her that she had always been enough, and it gave her the courage to finish the script. "No, Mama. This was _your_ dream for me, and I'd been too stubborn to see it until recently," she said, voice level and firm. "This is my life, it's for me to decide what's best. Thank you for this opportunity, and have a good rest of your day." She got up and simply left, the first time she'd ever gone before receiving express permission, and that alone was enough to make her giddy on the elevator ride down.

Soul was looking at his phone in the armchair until the clacking of her small heels alerted him. He smiled, and then it sort of froze on his face, and Maka was about to ask him what was wrong when a hand gripped her wrist.

"Maka, I think you're making a big mistake," Mama said, dark eyes serious even as she panted slightly to catch her breath. "This is your future on the line. Don't be rash and throw it all away because of some silly phase or desire to act out or whatever this is."

Maka looked down at Mama's hand on her wrist, and fought back the sudden swell of emotion as she realized that she would likely never be good enough for her. "I know. That's why I'm doing this, for me. When was the last time you asked me what I wanted, rather than spelling out what you thought I should want? Let me go, Mama."

After a second, she did, and Maka's arm fell back at her side. "I've always wanted you to have a good life," Mama said, the fight gone out of her. "I thought if you could get into this line of work, you'd have all the money and power you could possibly want to be happy, and lead a good life."

Maka smiled, lips thin. "A good life is about more than money and power. I want to help people, not companies." She swallowed the final lump in her throat. "I'll see you in court."

Mama looked surprised, then something like the ghost of a smile touched her lips as she said, "Yes, I'm sure you will."

Maka turned and left, grabbing Soul's hand before he could seem to decide whether he would say anything, and started them walking to the nearest Green Line station so she could see him on his way. He insisted on coming back to her place, though, saying something about having left food there to make for her, and she supposed it wouldn't be the end of the world.

"So it went okay, I guess?" he asked her after being quiet on the train, once they got off at her stop on the Red Line and began the walk to her apartment.

"Yeah," she said, still not sure how to describe this strange mass of feelings. "I think it went all right."

He made them lentil curry that they ate on home cooked flatbread, and then put on one of the movies he'd brought over the other week that they hadn't gotten to. Sometime into it, she began to shake a little, and then the weight of her decision crashed into her with enough force to leave her breathless. Soul stiffened on his end of the couch, and then, without saying a word, moved over so he could pull her against his side while she mourned the loss of the person she'd always thought she would become.

The next day dawned bright and clear, and though Maka still felt a little unstable now that she was off of the tracks that she'd followed her whole life, she also felt excited for the first time in a while about the future. She could chart out whatever she wanted, and she intended to get to planning as soon as she could.

First, she had to deal with the yawning lump on her couch. Soul had spent the night, saying he didn't feel comfortable leaving her alone after a day like she'd had, and she'd been too tired to let her pride insist he was wrong. So here he was, sitting up and rubbing his eyes and squinting at the clock on the wall.

"'S only eight thirty? Wake me up in an hour," he grumbled, and rolled himself into a burrito against the back of the couch.

Maka smiled and headed into the kitchen. It was far past time for her to cook for him, so she grabbed the cast iron skillet he'd left since that night with the steaks and began to cut potatoes for the breakfast skillet she'd seen on his blog. Once the onions, garlic, and potatoes had been sautéed enough to be thrown in the oven with some eggs, she got water boiling to make coffee.

Soul's little French press always made her smile, for some reason, maybe because it was the kind of worn that came from something that had been well loved and well used. She added the ridiculous amount of ground coffee she knew he preferred and listened to him roll around on the couch, probably debating whether it was worth the effort to investigate the smells coming from the kitchen. After she poured the boiling water into the press and its rich aroma began to mix in with the savory smells from the skillet, she heard his feet hit the floor.

"What're you making?" he said from the entrance, wearing yesterday's shirt with a pair of sweatpants that were a little too short, borrowed from Harvar so he wouldn't have to sleep in jeans.

"That breakfast skillet you posted a while ago," she answered, peeking in the oven to check on it. "It's about ready, actually, and your coffee will be by the time we get this all to the table."

He helped her get the table set and the coffee dealt with, and Maka tried not to hold her breath when he took the first bite. "It's delicious," he said, grabbing a second bite. "Great job."

They enjoyed the rest of the meal with easy conversation about Soul's next shoot and Maka's plans to look into defense attorney internships in the area. Harvar came out at one point to grab a cup of coffee and tease Soul about his bedhead, and Maka got that warm feeling again, the one she'd begun to feel on Thanksgiving after following Soul out into the cold.

"So I'll text you about lunch next weekend," Soul said as he was getting ready to leave. "I know your spring classes are starting up, but all of us at the apartment wanna see you again."

"Okay, that sounds good. Thanks for all your help, this past day," she said, remembering how safe she felt against his side last night and trying not to blush.

"Anytime. It's what friends are for." He gave her that lopsided smile and left, which meant she had to put up with Harvar's nosiness for the next hour as he tried to ascertain 'how far they got.'

Blaine was actually the one to text her about lunch the next weekend, with a shout-out about his upcoming show that she just _had_ to be at. Maka got there early because the bus was either very early or very late, and almost walked straight into Wes when he opened the door as she was about to knock.

"Oh, hello," she said, trying to smother her surprise.

Wes looked at her like they were old friends who happened to cross paths, leaned in for a quiet, "Thank you," and left.

Somewhat confused, she entered his apartment since the door was still open and found Soul in the living room, in the middle of an animated conversation with Anya.

"Maka, you're early," he said, seeing her hover by the kitchen, not sure if this was something she should interrupt.

"Yes, the bus was, too." She noticed what Anya was wearing, then, and said, "You finished it!"

Soul smiled that little pleased-with-himself-but-embarrassed-about-it smile. "Yeah, just the other day. It came out better than I thought it would."

"Lovely, isn't it?" Anya twirled in place and let the ends of the shawl pick up on the breeze, its off-white color making it look like she was wearing a dignified fur throw. "It's so soft and warm, I don't want to take it off."

"So, Wes?" Maka let the question hang, not sure where things stood between them or if she should be asking at all.

Anya smiled like she was trying to fight off a grin. "I'll leave you to it, I have to tidy up before the girls get here later." She was out of the room before Maka could do more than nod.

Soul was looking anywhere but at her. He cleared his throat. "I invited Wes over because seeing you deal with your mom the other day made me realize I can't keep running away from this stuff. I'm not sure how well it's gonna go, but I think I'm gonna go visit my parents with him sometime. Looks like there was a lot of misunderstanding on both sides."

"That's great! I'm happy to hear it," Maka said, relieved that Soul was dealing with something that had seemed to affect him so deeply.

He shrugged, the tips of his ears red. "It's not a big deal. You gave me the courage, after all."

Maka raised her eyebrows. "Like some long-haired friend of mine likes to remind me, it doesn't matter who gives you what, because at the end of the day you were the one to have to do it."

"Since when was Harvar that wise?" Soul said, pretending to look surprised.

Maka rolled her eyes, and then Blaine burst out of his room with Kid in hot pursuit, yelling something about finders keepers.

"Your ass is too fat to fit into my jeans!" Kid howled, chasing Blaine around the couch. "How many times do I have to tell you you can borrow my sweatpants, but not my jeans?"

Maka glanced at Soul, who gave her a little 'this is how they are' shoulder tilt, so she stepped a foot out to trip Blaine onto the couch and hand Kid back his jeans.

"Betrayal! I thought what we had was special," Blaine said, looking supremely unconcerned that his stunt had been foiled. "Also, nice reaction time babe, I think you're getting faster."

Kid arched an eyebrow and said, "I could make one of your silly television references right now, but because we have company, I will desist."

If actual heart-eyes were possible, Blaine would have had them in that moment.

Soul got up to serve their lunch of wraps and salad and homemade grapefruit rosemary soda, and at one point Maka caught herself feeling overwhelmed at the existence of all of these people who cared about her - at how fortunate she was to have made it this far.

Soul looked over at her and smiled in a way that made her stomach weightless, and yes, there were still things to look forward to, still doors she could open by virtue of knowing they were there. She took another bite of food that sharpened the world, and smiled. It was time to get to work.


End file.
